Title: A lightweight encryption and authentication scheme for wireless sensor networks

Authors: Jianliang Zheng, Jie Li, Myung J. Lee, Michael Anshel

Addresses: Department of Electrical Engineering, City College, The City University of New York, NewYork, NY, USA. ' Department of Computer Science, Graduate Center, The City University of New York, NewYork, NY, USA. ' Department of Electrical Engineering, City College, The City University of New York, NewYork, NY, USA. ' Department of Computer Science, City College, The City University of New York, NewYork, NY, USA

Abstract: The research of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) has recently received a strong boost from IEEE 802.15.4 task group, which focuses on the specifications for low rate wireless personal area networks. Another important driving force of WSNs is the ZigBee Alliance, an industrial alliance concentrating on WSNs. This paper addresses the security of WSNs with respect to the protocol stack defined by IEEE 802.15.4 and the ZigBee Alliance. Some security problems are identified and remedies are suggested. A new security architecture based on a lightweight public key scheme, called Derivable Public Key (DPK), is proposed. The DPK scheme significantly simplifies the public key operations and reduces the related cost by eliminating the need for distributing and storing public keys other than the one from the trust centre. It makes possible to support authentications for multicast/broadcast communications in WSNs, which are not available and account for many attacks so far.

Keywords: security; wireless sensor networks; WSNs; derivable public key; DPK; wireless networks; encryption; authentication.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSN.2006.011773

International Journal of Security and Networks, 2006 Vol.1 No.3/4, pp.138 - 146

Published online: 21 Dec 2006 *

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