Active key management scheme to avoid clone attack in wireless sensor network

Abstract

In Wireless sensor Network, the sensor nodes transmit critical information over the network; therefore, security services, such as, authentication and pair wise key establishment between sensor nodes and mobile sinks, are important. However, the problem of authentication and pair wise key establishment in sensor networks with MSs is still not solved in the face of mobile sink replication attacks. For the basic probabilistic and q-composite key pre distribution schemes, an attacker can easily obtain a large number of keys by capturing a small fraction of the network sensor nodes, making it possible for the attacker to take control of the entire network by deploying a replicated mobile sink, preloaded with some compromised keys to authenticate and then initiate data communication with any sensor node. To solve this problem, we have developed a general framework that permits the use of any pair wise key pre distribution scheme as its basic component, to provide authentication and pair wise key establishment between sensor nodes and MSs. The new framework requires two separate key pools, one for the mobile sink to access the network, and one for pair wise key establishment between the sensors.