Soufiene Ben Othman

Confidentiality and Integrity for Data Aggregation in WSN Using Homomorphic Encryption

Data aggregation is an important method to reduce the energy consumption in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), however, performing data aggregation while preserving data confidentiality and integrity is mounting a challenge. The existing solutions either have large communication and computation overheads or produce inaccurate results. This paper proposes a novel secure data aggregation scheme based on homomorphic encryption in WSNs. The scheme adopts a symmetric-key homomorphic encryption to protect data privacy and combines it with homomorphic signature to check the aggregation data integrity. In addition, during the decryption of aggregated data, the base station is able to classify the encrypted and aggregated data based on the encryption keys. Simulation results and performance analysis show that our mechanism requires less communication and computation overheads than previously known methods. It can effectively preserve data privacy, check data integrity, and achieve high data transmission efficiency. Also, it performs accurate data aggregation rate while consuming less energy to prolong network lifetime.

Secure data aggregation in wireless sensor networks

In-network data aggregation is an effective method to reduce the amount of data transmitted and therefore saves energy consumption in sensor networks. However, an adversary may compromise some sensor nodes, and use them to forge false values as the aggregation result. Previous secure data aggregation schemes have tackled this problem from different angles. The goal of those algorithms is to ensure that the Base Station (BS) does not accept any forged aggregation results. Based on our survey of existing research efforts for ensuring secure data aggregation, a novel approach that uses homomorphic encryption and Message Authentication Codes (MAC) to achieve confidentiality, authentication and integrity for secure data aggregation in wireless sensor networks is proposed. Our experiments show that our proposed secure aggregation method significantly reduces computation and communication overhead.

Performance trade-offs of encryption algorithms for Wireless Sensor Networks

Several security mechanisms have been introduced to address the need for reliable and efficient security schemes in resource limited Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Limitations in processing speed, battery power, bandwidth and memory constrain the applicability of existing cryptographic Algorithms in WSNs. Accordingly, it is necessary to assess the performance tradeoffs of the cryptographic algorithms to provide a better understanding of the security cost. In this paper, we have studied three block cipher algorithms: Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), RC5, and RC6. We have measured and compared their memory and energy consumption in the Mica2 sensor motes. Experimentation results show that AES has higher memory and energy requirements than RC5 and RC6. RC6 has higher operation time and power consumption while RC5 is the most time- and energy-efficient block cipher and thus the best cipher solution for devices with limited resources.

Secure Data Aggregation with MAC Authentication in Wireless Sensor Networks

Recently, several data aggregation schemes based on privacy homomorphism encryption have been proposed and investigated on wireless sensor networks. These data aggregation schemes provide better security compared with traditional aggregation since cluster heads (aggregator) can directly aggregate the ciphertexts without decryption; consequently, transmission overhead is reduced. Based on our survey of existing research efforts for ensuring secure data aggregation, a novel approach that uses homomorphic encryption and Message Authentication Codes (MAC) to achieve confidentiality, authentication and integrity for secure data aggregation in wireless sensor networks is proposed. Our experiments show that our proposed secure aggregation method significantly reduces computation and communication overhead and can be practically implemented in on-the-shelf sensor platforms.

An efficient secure data aggregation scheme for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) often consists of a large number of low-cost sensor nodes that have strictly limited sensing, computation, and communication capabilities. Due to these unique specifications and a lack of tamper-resistant hardware, devising security protocols for WSNs is complex. Previous studies show that data transmission consumes much more energy than computation. Data aggregation can greatly help to reduce this consumption by eliminating redundant data. As wireless sensor networks are usually deployed in remote and hostile environments and used to transmit sensitive information, sensor nodes are prone to node compromise attacks and hence security issues such as data confidentiality and integrity are extremely important. A novel approach, which uses homomorphic encryption and additive digital signatures, is proposed to provide confidentiality, integrity for secure data aggregation in WSNs. The performance evaluation shows that the proposed scheme is efficient and scalable for large WSNs.

Security architecture for at-home medical care using Wireless Sensor Network

Distributed wireless sensor network technologies have become one of the major research areas in healthcare industries due to rapid maturity in improving the quality of life. Medical Wireless Sensor Network (MWSN) via continuous monitoring of vital health parameters over a long period of time can enable physicians to make more accurate diagnosis and provide better treatment. The MWSNs provide the options for flexibilities and cost saving to patients and healthcare industries. Medical data sensors on patients produce an increasingly large volume of increasingly diverse real-time data. The transmission of this data through hospital wireless networks becomes a crucial problem, because the health information of an individual is highly sensitive. It must be kept private and secure. In this paper, we propose a security model to protect the transfer of medical data in hospitals using MWSNs. We propose Compressed Sensing + Encryption as a strategy to achieve low-energy secure data transmission in sensor networks.

Performance Evaluation of EC-ElGamal Encryption Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks

The rapid development in the Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) filed has allowed this technology to be used in many applications. In some of these applications, wireless sensor devices must be secured, especially when the captured information is valuable, sensitive, or for military usage. However, the implementation of security mechanisms on WSNs is a non-trivial task. Limitations in processing speed, battery power, bandwidth and memory constrain the applicability of existing cryptography algorithms for WSNs. The security of WSNs poses challenges because of the criticality of the data sensed by a node and in turn the node meets severe constraints like minimal energy, computational and communicational capabilities. Taking all the above said challenges energy efficiency or battery life time plays a major role in network lifetime. Providing security consumes some energy used by a node, so there is a need to minimize the energy consumption of any security algorithm that will be implemented in WSNs. As a solution, we apply an additive homomorphic encryption scheme, namely the elliptic curve ElGamal (EC-ElGamal) cryptosystem, and present the performance results of our implementation for the prominent sensor platform MicaZ mote.