Providing security using Signature-Based Broadcast Authentication in Sensor Networks

Abstract

As per recent studies  it is feasible to perform public key cryptographic operations on resource-constrained sensor platforms. But the problem is energy consumption introduced by public key operations makes any public key-based protocol an easy target of Denial-of-Service attacks. For example, if digital signature schemes like Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm are used directly for broadcast authentication without further protection, an attacker can simply broadcast fake messages and force the receiving nodes to perform a huge number of unnecessary signature verifications, and can consume  their battery power. This paper shows how to mitigate such Denial-of-Service attacks  when digital signatures are used for broadcast authentication in sensor networks. Specifically, this paper first presents two filtering techniques, the group-based filter and the key chain-based filter, to handle the Denial-of-Service  attacks against signature verification. Both methods can  reduce the number of unnecessary signature verifications when a sensor node is under Denial-of-Service attack. This paper then combines these two filters and proposes a hybrid solution to further improve the performance.

Keywords: Sensor networks, security, broadcast authentication, Denial-of-Service attacks, digital signature.