Program integrity verification for detecting node capture attack in wireless sensor network

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are used in various applications mostly in hostile and emergency environments e.g. battle field surveillance, monitoring of nuclear activities, etc. The unattended deployment of WSNs, unreliable wireless communication and inherent resource constraints necessitate addressing the security of the WSNs in an efficient and economical way. In this paper, a node program integrity verification protocol is proposed in which the cluster heads are equipped with Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and serve as the verifiers. The protocol aims to first ensure the authentication of the verifier by a node, thereby, only an authenticated verifier is allowed to verify the authenticity and the integrity of the program of a node within its cluster. The proposed protocol also ensures that capture of one node does not reveal the secret of any other node in the network to the adversary. In addition to this, the protocol is secured against node collusion, man-in-the-middle and impersonation attacks. Since, the proposed protocol considers TPMs only at the cluster heads, unlike fully TPM enabled WSN, the overall network deployment cost is reduced. The aim of the proposed protocol is to provide program integrity verification for detecting node capture attack in a WSN with reduced computational, communication and storage cost overhead compared to the existing protocols for program integrity verification. The performance analysis and the simulation results verify the performance improvement.