A key renewal model for wireless sensor network under node capture attack

Abstract

Node capture attack is one of the most dreadful security attack exist in wireless sensor networks. An adversary steals mostly all key informations from a captured node. Therefore, the impact of node capture attack can be lessened by renew the keys through a authenticated channel in a periodic or reactive manner. Existing key renewal techniques are mostly based on the statistic or behavior of attacks. In this paper we proposed a key renewal model in wireless sensor networks using age replacement policy. We use this model to find the expected time interval between two successive key renewals to mitigate the impact of node capture attack on the network. We have also deduced the relationship between expected time interval between successive key renewals and the strength of the attacker. © 2011 IEEE.