Events privacy in WSNs: A new model and its application

Abstract

A novel issue resource constrained Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are affected by is context privacy. Indeed, while a few solutions do exist to provide data privacy to WSNs (i.e. to protect message confidentiality), providing context privacy (e.g. preventing an adversary to locate the source of a message) is still an open research problem. This paper attacks the issue providing several contributions. First, a formal model to reason about event privacy in WSNs is introduced. This model also captures dynamic events. Second, we introduce a new realistic class of mobile events a WSN can experience. These events become the target of our privacy preserving efforts. Third, we propose a privacy enforcing solution for the above class of events: the Unobservable Handoff Trajectory (UHT) Protocol. UHT is scalable and distributed. The analysis shows that it is both effective and efficient in terms of the induced overhead. It also minimizes the delay to notify the event sources location to the base station, while preserving the intended degree of privacy. Finally, extensive simulations confirm our findings.

Markov Decision Processes With Applications in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

“…For example, many studies discussed the patients' privacy concerns when using a wireless body area network to gather data about daily health conditions [160], [161]. However, the resource limitations of WSNs impede the wide inclusion of privacy solutions to protect message confidentiality [162]. MDPs can be used to find a balanced tradeoff between the complexity of privacy models and energy consumption.…”

Privacy Models in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

“…Routing Aggregation Packet injection Anonymity/ -anonymity/pseudonymity Statistics [44] x x Anonymity [39] x [30] x x [22] x x [28] -anonymity [25] x x [52] x x [29] x [31] x x Anonymity [21] x [34] Pseudonymity [20] x x [49] x x [53] x [16] x (+ ring signature) Pseudonymity [46] x x [50] Pseudonymity [35] x [54] x [13] (x) (x) [14] x x Pseudonymity [24] x Anonymity [38] x [18] (x) x x [47] x [48] x [26] x x [42] x Pseudonymity [27] x x [45] x x [15] (x) x x [19] x x x Pseudonymity [32] x [23] x x x [17] x Pseudonymity [43] x x [36] x [33] x [37] x [40] x x x [41] x x x the survey is representative of the different directions in this field. Additionally, since papers are from the last 5 years, this section gives an up-to-date vision on the research trends in WSN privacy.…”

“…Even if privacy seems a single requirement, it involves several goals that may be achieved to a different extent. [39] Source [30] x (query) [22] x (sensor data) [28] Source [25] x (source) [52] Sink [29] x (events) [31] x (query)…”

“…x x [29] x [31] x [21] x x [34] x x [20] x [49] x [53] x [16] x x [46] x [50] x [35] x x [54] x [13] x x [14] x x [24] x x [38] x [18] x x [47] x [48] x [26] x [42] x x [27] x [45] x [15] x x [19] [32]…”

“…First, sensor data may be relevant itself [22]. Second, events, that is, special reporting by sensors when their perceptions are beyond a given threshold, are also critical [16,29]. The third information element are queries and their results.…”