The More the Safe, the Less the Unsafe: An efficient method to unauthenticated packets detection in WSNs

Abstract

This paper proposes an efficient method to unauthenticated packets detection in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Unauthenticated packets are broadcasted within the network by attacker nodes to increase in the network energy consumption as well as the network congestion. Proposed method uses the More the Safe, the Less the Unsafe, MSLU, policy to unauthenticated packets detection. Based on MSLU policy, if after each event occurrence several sensor nodes report it to a base station, then this event occurrence report with high probably is an authenticated event. On the other hand, unauthenticated packets with high probably are made and injected within the network by an attacker node. In the more the safe, the less the unsafe policy, sensor nodes do not tend to relay packets that have been made by a node. WSNs are event-driven networks with many to one traffic pattern. Of course, WSNs are very redundant, so each point within the network is covered by more than one sensor node. Since, the more the safe, the less the unsafe policy, considers an occurred event must be reported by several sensor nodes. Simulation results that have been implemented via NS-2 simulator show that the proposed method detects more than 85% unauthenticated packets in average.