Cooperative Authentication in Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

Abstract

With the growing use of underwater acoustic communications (UWAC) for both industrial and military operations, there is a need to ensure communication security. A particular challenge is represented by underwater acoustic networks (UWANs), which are often left unattended over long periods of time. Currently, due to physical and performance limitations, UWAC packets rarely include encryption, leaving the UWAN exposed to external attacks faking legitimate messages. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for message authentication in a UWAN setting. We begin by observing that, due to the strong spatial dependency of the underwater acoustic channel, an attacker can attempt to mimic the channel associated with the legitimate transmitter only for a small set of receivers, typically just for a single one. Taking this into account, our scheme relies on trusted nodes that independently help a sink node in the authentication process. For each incoming packet, the sink fuses beliefs evaluated by the trusted nodes to reach an authentication decision. These beliefs are based on estimated statistical channel parameters, chosen to be the most sensitive to the transmitterreceiver displacement. Our simulation results show accurate identification of an attacker's packet. We also report results from a sea experiment demonstrating the effectiveness of our approach.

Maximize resource utilization based channel access model with presence of reactive jammer for underwater wireless sensor network

“…However, it induces collision among neighboring contending device. In [15], showed that UWSN packets rarely include encryption due to physical and performance limitations. Thus, UWSN is exposed to various kind of security attack breaching legitimate message.…”

“…These model aims to attain optimal use of available resource (spectrum). Thus, these model are referred as optimal resource allocation schemes [14,15]. In optimal resource allocation schemes, the sensor device, rather than avoiding a jammer by using different instance of spectrum, depends on exploring the existing spectrum in most resourceful way to mitigate jamming.…”

“…In optimal resource allocation schemes, the sensor device, rather than avoiding a jammer by using different instance of spectrum, depends on exploring the existing spectrum in most resourceful way to mitigate jamming. Further, [15] presented a cooperative authentication communication to attain optimal resource allocation. Similarly, [16] presented cooperative communication scheme for relay/hop selection and [17] adopted cross layer design for relay node selection.…”

A Trust Update Mechanism Based on Reinforcement Learning in Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

“…U DERWATER acoustic sensor networks (UASNs) are expected to play an increasingly important role in many fields, such as marine environmental monitoring, offshore exploration, auxiliary navigation, tsunami warning and marine military operations [1][2][3][4]. As shown in Fig.…”

A Secure Remote Mutual Authentication Scheme Based on Chaotic Map for Underwater Acoustic Networks

“…Besides, the underwater acoustic channel is a public circumstance, which makes underwater acoustic communication more vulnerable to various attacks [1]. Recent studies on UANs mainly focus on network construction or protocol management [2], while only a few studies have been done on network safety [1]- [5]. Consequently, we chiefly study the safety matters for UANs in this scheme.…”