Coordinate plane based authentication method for detecting clone node in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Nowadays, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have become a very promising technology for automatic data collection in many applications. Due to the feature of limited resource, WSNs are more vulnerable to certain attacks, such as node clone attacks. An adversary can clone a valid member sensor node and place the new clone node within the group to collect information in the group. The clone node has the same information as the cloned one, and can act as if it were the cloned one to obtain the group key, leading to leakage of group communication data. The current solutions have drawbacks; for instance, schemes based on IDS require additional component support. In this paper, a novel authentication scheme is proposed to address node clone attacks, utilizing a coordinate plane instead of geographical locations. This scheme also possesses additional functionalities, effectively managing node additions and revocations while incorporating collusion attack detection. Through theoretical analysis, the detection rate of our scheme is approximately 99.5%. Experimental simulations demonstrate that the practical detection rate of our scheme is 98.4%, which is lower than the theoretical maximum rate but is higher than that of many recent works and does not rely on additional mechanisms such as trust or hierarchical structures. Furthermore, through multiple rounds of detection, the overall detection rate can be further improved, and collusion attacks can be effectively identified.