A new security protocol using hybrid cryptography algorithms

A group of sensor nodes deployed in particular environment constitutes a wireless sensor network (WSN). At times the WSN can be even deployed in a very sensitive area where the security becomes a great problem. The present asymmetric encryption methods and symmetric encryption methods can offer the security levels but with many limitations. For instance key maintenance is a great problem faced in symmetric encryption methods and less security level is the problem of asymmetric encryption methods even though key maintenance is easy. A hybrid encryption method that combines both symmetric and asymmetric key can provide high security with minimized key maintenance. In this paper, a new security protocol using combination of both symmetric and asymmetric cryptographic techniques is proposed. This protocol provides three cryptographic primitives, integrity, confidentiality and authentication. It is a hybrid encryption method where elliptical curve cryptography (ECC) and advanced encryption (AES) are combined to provide node encryption. XOR-DUAL RSA algorithm is considered for authentication and (MD5) for integrity. The results show that the proposed hybrid cryptographic algorithm gives better performance in terms of computation time and the size of cipher text.