Per node deployment based detection of controlled link establishment attack in distributed sensor networks

The great majority of processes in distributed sensor networks can only be accomplished via collaborative efforts of sensor nodes. However, the success of these processes is undermined by an attack termed controlled link establishment attack exemplified by node replication attack and key-swapping collusion attack based on their final attack goal. Countermeasures against the two latter attacks can be utilised as remedies for the controlled link establishment attack. Nevertheless, each of such countermeasures exposes its own limitations. In this paper, we propose a series of evolutionary schemes to overcome those limitations. The first two schemes are designed to be lightweight in performance at the cost of slightly weaker security robustness while the final scheme obtains much greater security by trading off small performance. Theoretical analyses, simulations, and extensive comparison with other schemes have been conducted to demonstrate the plausibility of our schemes with respect to security features and performance overheads. Copyright © 2011 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd