Design of efficient algorithms for secure group communication in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Security plays a significant role in wireless sensor networks. The communication in the network must be reliable and kept confidential owing to the nature of communication and type of data handled by them. Encryption is one primary method through which we can provide confidentiality for the messages communicated in a network. There may be set of sensor nodes that wish to have such confidential communication. This scenario is referred to as Secure Group Communication (SGC). newline newlineSGC uses a key that is shared between the group members for achieving confidentiality of messages. This key is used for encrypting and decrypting messages communicated among a set of sensor nodes and is known as group key. As the groups are dynamic by nature, it is necessary to update the group key every time there is a variation in group membership. The technique of modifying the group key and sending it to existing nodes of a group securely is referred to as rekeying. Although rekeying becomes simple for join operation because new key can be distributed to current members by means of old key, it becomes difficult for leave operation as it is not possible to use old key for distributing new key. Therefore, as efficient technique is required for rekeying during addition/eviction operation. Hence, key management is an important issue to address in SGC. It is necessary to use a key management approach that provides security to messages with a lesser amount of overhead on sensor nodes.In this thesis, we discuss the issues pertaining to key management and develop schemes for managing the keys used for secure communication in a group. We address the concept of message authentication and provide schemes for authentication of the messages. We also address data aggregation techniques and achieving fault tolerance during aggregation. newline newline newline