Remote software-based attestation for wireless sensors

  • Authors:

  • Mark Shaneck;Karthikeyan Mahadevan;Vishal Kher;Yongdae Kim

  • Affiliations:

  • Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities;Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities;Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities;Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

  • Venue:
  • ESAS'05 Proceedings of the Second European conference on Security and Privacy in Ad-Hoc and Sensor Networks
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Wireless sensor networks are envisioned to be deployed in mission-critical applications. Detecting a compromised sensor, whose memory contents have been tampered, is crucial in these settings, as the attacker can reprogram the sensor to act on his behalf. In the case of sensors, the task of verifying the integrity of memory contents is difficult as physical access to the sensors is often infeasible. In this paper, we propose a software-based approach to verify the integrity of the memory contents of the sensors over the network without requiring physical contact with the sensor. We describe the building blocks that can be used to build a program for attestation purposes, and build our attestation program based on these primitives. The success of our approach is not dependent on accurate measurements of the execution time of the attestation program. Further, we do not require any additional hardware support for performing remote attestation. Our attestation procedure is designed to detect even small memory changes and is designed to be resistant against modifications by the attacker.