Safety in wireless sensor networks: Types of attacks and solutions

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are highly vulnerable in their security. They are generally deployed in hostile environments to collect different kinds of data, so they are exposed to serious physical and software attacks. Therefore, developing methods to increase security becomes an essential aspect of the study of these networks. WSNs are used in military, medical and biological applications, among others. This paper analyzes the security requirements of WSNs, the main attacks, and their main characteristics; finally it reviews some security methods currently proposed or implemented in these networks, and identifies the possible types of security attacks that can affect the layers of the OSI Reference Model.