KILAVI Wireless Communication Protocol for the Building Environment – Security Issues

Abstract

Asymmetric key cryptosystems are unsuitable for use in the resource constrained sensor nodes and typically the biggest challenge in all symmetric security systems is how to exchange the initial encryption key safely. In many communication protocols, this is carried out without any security procedure or the challenge has been left to the application developer to solve. If an adversary receives this first insecure message, the security of the whole network is threatened. This is a very serious security problem especially in wireless and dynamic systems such as KILAVI where new off-the-shelf devices are attached to the system. KILAVI contains special security procedures to authenticate new devices safely into the system with easy and fast registration. For encryption, KILAVI uses the RC5 algorithm in a counter (CTR) mode. The length of encrypted and plain messages is the same due to the counter mode, an important quality when minimizing the power consumption in wireless data transfer. 1

A Security Architecture for Reconfigurable Networked Embedded Systems

“…With reference to closer works, the ZUMA middleware provides efficient end-to-end secure communication by means of Kilavi [43], a security protocol for home-automation applications. ZUMA secure communication services can be implemented within our architecture by properly implementing the corresponding component frameworks.…”

Authentic delay bounded event detection in heterogeneous wireless sensor networks

“…In [8], a link-layer security scheme, TinySec, was proposed. In [9], new node authentication and message encryption using the RC5 algorithm in counter (CTR) mode was addressed. The cryptographic keys are normally group-wise, pair-wise, or network-wise.…”

Beyond Sensor Networks: ZUMA Middleware

“…The Kilavi platform was developed at the Tampere University of Technology, Finland and consists of a physical sensor node platform in addition to a gateway device that manages the network. For more detailed information on the Kilavi platform and protocols; please see [6,7]. There are many issues that affect sensor network operation.…”