IP Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks : Security Aspects to be Considered when Implementing 6LoWPAN

This paper has covered some security aspects to consider when deploying 6LoWPAN in wireless sensor networks. The issues mentioned in this paper revolve around encryption and authentication methods as well as key distribution mechanism. Security features at the link and network layer have been evaluated and the conclusion is that both do provide with good security but it is not always sufficient. For example, hop-by-hop security at the link layer could be really strong if you are in control of all links between source and destination, however, when transmitting data over the Internet this is rarely the case. As an alternative the network layer provide with an end-to-end solution with a compressed version of IPsec, but due to insufficient models for key distribution the keys are required to be distributed manually. This means that there is no support for asymmetric keys in a wireless sensor network at the time, but further research might solve these issues