FKM: A Fingerprint-Based Key Management Protocol for SoC-Based Sensor Networks

Abstract

Recently, System-on-Chip (SoC) technology has been adopted to design smaller, lower-power and cheaper tamper- resistant sensor nodes. In these nodes, we find that there exists a lifetime-secure memory fraction which stores the anterior part of the application executable binary code, namely "fingerprint". We propose a key management protocol based on this secure fingerprint-- FKM. In this protocol, any pair of nodes can build a secret key by combining two raw key elements randomly selected by both nodes from their fingerprints respectively. To further strengthen the security, we also present two multi-dimension grid key reinforcement schemes. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first attempt at the use of application executable binary code itself to develop a key management protocol. A thorough analysis shows that FKM supports higher security and superior operational properties while consuming less memory resource compared to the existing key establishment schemes.