PUF-Based Mutual-Authenticated Key Distribution for Dynamic Sensor Networks

Because of the movements of sensor nodes and unknown mobility pattern, how to ensure two communicating (static or mobile) nodes authenticate and share a pairwise key is important. In this paper, we propose a mutual-authenticated key distribution scheme based on physical unclonable functions (PUFs) for dynamic sensor networks. Compared with traditional key predistribution schemes, the proposal reduces the storage overhead and the key exposure risks and thereby improves the resilience against node capture attacks. Mutual authentication is provided by the PUF challenge-response mechanism. However, the PUF response is not transmitted in plain forms so as to resist the modelling attacks, which is vulnerable in some existing PUF-based schemes. We demonstrate the proposed scheme to improve the secure connectivity and other performances by analysis and experiments.

A Hybrid Key Pre-Distribution Scheme for Securing Communications in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a type of ad hoc networks which consist of hundreds to thousands of sensor nodes. These sensor nodes collaborate to surveillance environment. WSNs have a variety of applications in military, industrial and other fields and they are fit to study environments that presence of human being is costly or dangerous. Sensor nodes have memory, energy and processing limitations. According to sensors' limitations and also increasing use of these networks in military fields, establishing a secure WSN is very important and challenging. Applying Key Predistribution Schemes (KPSs) is one of the effective and useful mechanisms to provide security in WSN. In this paper, a hybrid KPS is proposed that support three various keys, primary pairwise, polynomial, and ordinary. The proposed scheme has been implemented using J-SIM simulator and its performance has been evaluated in terms of maximum supportable network sizes and resiliency against node capture attack, by performing some experiments. Simulation results have been compared with Basic, q-Composite, RS, Cluster-Based, QS, and Double-Key Hash schemes. The compared results showed that the proposed scheme has a better resiliency against links disclosing via enemies.