Securing Wireless Sensor Networks Against Spurious Injections

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are best suited for perceiving a phenomenon, which in turn forms the basis for controlling an actuator in a corrective plane. However, before the corrective action can be invoked, it is necessary to validate that the data was not injected with a malicious intent. To this end we propose CADA (cellular automata based data authentication mechanism), a lightweight protocol to authenticate data from valid nodes. Unlike its predecessors, it is designed to assume scarcity of multiple resources viz power, processing, storage, bandwidth and radio range.CADA takes advantage of the concurrent operations in cellular automata components and is therefore not only fast but also easily realizable in hardware.