Sink Location Protection Protocols Based on Packet Sending Rate Adjustment

2022

IEEE Access

The vital role of a base station (BS) in a wireless sensor network (WSN) has made it a favorable target in hostile environments. Despite attempts to physically make the BS hidden to prying eyes, traffic analysis would give an adversary insight into the network topology and the BS whereabouts. Evidence Theory (ET) is a prominent methodology for performing such an analysis. Unfortunately, all existing countermeasures not only overlook patterns of energy usage in WSNs, but also impose untamed overhead that shortens the WSN lifetime. In this paper, we first propose a novel energy-aware and multi-zone scheme to significantly reduce the overhead of countermeasures on highly overburdened nodes in the BS proximity, and hence significantly improve the WSN lifespan. We also show how our proposed scheme improves resilience against ET via diminishing the collected evidence by an adversary. We then propose a novel cross-layer technique that exploits transmission range adjustment to confuse the adversary about the data paths. This results in a versatile and effective countermeasure that significantly improves anonymity of the BS. The performance is validated through extensive simulation experiments.

Section: A Traffic Analysis Threatmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: ) Exploiting Bs Mobilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy-Aware Cross-Layer Technique for Countering Traffic Analysis Attacks on Wireless Sensor Network

Ebrahimi

2022

IEEE Access

“…Similarly, forwarding delay is used in [59] so that the traffic from a certain source is blended with traffic from other sources; however, unlike [27], the delay is determined using an open queue model. Meanwhile, L-SRA [60] uses packet buffering to equalize the same transmission rate among all nodes. It takes into account the number of active sources at a given time to set the transmission rates along the routes towards the BS.…”

Section: Iii) Routing Topology Obfuscationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Traffic Analysis Through Spatial and Temporal Correlation: Threat and Countermeasure

Ebrahimi

2021

IEEE Access

The base station (BS) in a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) plays the role of a data sink, a point of contact with the upper hierarchy, and an in-situ command and control unit. Such an essential role makes the BS a target for attacks in a hostile environment. Even if its presence is camouflaged, an adversary may locate the BS by applying traffic analysis. Basically, the adversary can intercept radio transmissions and correlate them using techniques like Evidence theory (ET). The ET attack model only uses spatial aspects of intercepted transmissions in order to deduce knowledge about data routes. In this paper, we propose an enhanced version of ET (EET) which utilizes temporal correlation of transmissions to draw further valuable insight about the network topology. Analyzing ET and extending its capability are very fundamental for the network in order to avoid the illusive sense of security by guarding against a weaker attack model than what could be potentially launched. Moreover, we develop a novel and effective countermeasure, called Assisted Deception (AD) that needs no involvement of BS and is resilient to both ET and EET. By implementing AD, nodes coordinate and inject timed deceptive packets to target temporal correlation of consecutive transmissions that EET relies on. The attack and countermeasure are validated through extensive simulation experiments.

“…The sensor nodes around a fake sink FS i generate dummy messages that get discarded when received by FS i . On the other hand, L‐SRA opts to hide the BS by unifying the transmission rate at all relays and data sources through packet buffering. Hong et al use a traffic shaping scheme that randomly delays the transmission of packets to hide the traffic pattern.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cross‐layer technique for boosting base‐station anonymity in wireless sensor networks

Alsemairi

2017

Int J Communication

A wireless sensor network (WSN) principally is composed of many sensor nodes and a single in situ base station (BS), which are randomly distributed in a given area of interest. These sensor nodes transmit their measurements to the BS over multihop wireless paths. In addition to collecting and processing the sensed data, the BS performs network management operations. Because of the importance of the BS to the WSN, it is the most attractive target of attacks for an adversary. Basically, the adversary opts to locate the BS and target it with denial-of-service attack to temporarily or indefinitely disrupt the WSN operation. The adversary can intercept the data packet transmissions and use traffic analysis techniques such as evidence theory to uncover the routing topology. To counter such an attack, this paper presents a novel technique for boosting the BS anonymity by grouping nodes into clusters and creating multiple mesh-based routing topologies among the cluster heads (CHs). By applying the closed space-filling curves such as the Moore curve, for forming a mesh, the CHs are offered a number of choices for disseminating aggregated data to the BS through inter-CH paths. Then, the BS forwards the aggregated data as well so that it appears as one of the CHs. The simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed technique in boosting the anonymity of the BS. KEYWORDS anonymity, location privacy, traffic analysis, wireless sensor network 1 | INTRODUCTIONRecent advances in microelectronics have made it possible to integrate sensing and communication capabilities in miniaturized devices that are often referred to in the literature as sensor nodes. Interconnecting a large set of these nodes forms a wireless sensor network (WSN) that can serve unattended in harsh environments. A typical WSN includes an in situ base station (BS) that gathers data from the sensor nodes. WSNs are deemed effective in serving applications such as a military surveillance and target tracking where continuous monitoring of an area of interest is critical and human presence is risky and/or prohibitively expensive. In most of these WSN applications, sensor nodes have limited capabilities, eg, limited communication range, energy (battery) supply, and processing capacity. To overcome communication range limitations and to save energy, we find that sensor nodes transmit their measurements to the BS over multihop wireless paths. 1,2 On the other hand, the BS is not resource constrained and can perform network management and process the collected data. Because of the importance of the BS to the WSN, it can be the focus of an adversary who attempts to inflict the most damage to the network operation. The goal of the adversary will be to locate the BS and target it with denial-of-service attack so that the utility of the WSN is nullified. 3,4 Contemporary security mechanisms, such as packet header encryption and anonymous routing mechanisms, are often applied to conceal the BS's identity. [5][6][7][8][9] However, these security mechanisms do not ...