Energy Efficient Key Management Protocols to Securely Confirm Intrusion Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks are prone to many security attacks. The most complex among them is the node compromise attack. Networks enhanced with services like aggregation and security require a different intrusion detection mechanism than the generally used solutions and there is a possibility of a compromised node producing false intrusion detection alarms. Therefore we need suitable mechanisms to detect intrusion and to securely confirm the same. We propose two major schemes: 1) a post-deployment key distribution based permanent key establishment scheme 2) two on-the-fly key establishment schemes. The simulation results and analysis show that on-the-fly schemes are better suited for intrusion confirmation in energy constrained sensor networks. A simple and practical intrusion defense scheme also is suggested.