Secure and robust virtual coordinate system in wireless sensor networks

  • Authors:

  • Jing Dong;Kurt E. Ackermann;Brett Bavar;Cristina Nita-Rotaru

  • Affiliations:

  • Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN;Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN;Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN;Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN)
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

Virtual Coordinate System (VCS)-based routing provides a practical, efficient, and scalable means for point-to-point routing in wireless sensor networks. Several VCS-based routing protocols have been proposed in the last few years, all assuming that nodes behave correctly. However, many applications require deploying sensor networks in adversarial environments, making VCS-based routing protocols vulnerable to numerous attacks. In this article, we study the security of VCS-based routing protocols, with a focus on the unique component of VCS-based routing protocols, the virtual coordinate system. We first identify the security requirements of a correctly functioning VCS-based routing protocol and a set of novel attacks that can result in the violation of each of the identified requirements. The attacks target the underlying virtual coordinate system and can be mounted with low resources. However, they are epidemic in nature and are highly destructive to system performance. We then propose lightweight defense mechanisms designed specifically for resource-constrained sensor networks against each of the identified attacks. The proposed techniques require only local information on sensor nodes and take into account the unreliable nature of wireless links and network churn. Finally, we evaluate experimentally the impact of the attacks and the effectiveness of our defense mechanisms using a well-known VCS-based routing protocol, BVR. Our experiments show that the proposed techniques successfully mitigate all the identified attacks under a realistic link model and even at a high level of network churn.