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Maximizing destructiveness of node capture attack in wireless sensor networks

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Abstract

As a special kind of attack, node capture attack in wireless sensor networks destroys the confidentiality and integrity of network traffic by physically capturing sensor nodes and extracting the cryptographic keys for eavesdropping the communications. However, previous researches pay little attention to the attacking efficiency, which leads to big attacking times and long execution time. In this paper, we propose a graph-based method for modeling the node capture attack on random key pre-distribution scheme. A full graph is constructed to specialize the compromising relationships between nodes and paths, and then the way of evaluating the destructiveness is introduced. The full graph attack (FGA) is designed to ensure the maximum destructiveness of each captured node so as to reduce the attacking times and shorten the execution time, simultaneously. To promote the performance of FGA in attacking efficiency, two optimal attacking algorithms, namely opti-graph attack (OGA) and path covering attack (PCA), are developed. Simulation results show that FGA, OGA and PCA reduce 38, 10 and 51 % attacking times, and enhance 39, 11 and 40 % attacking efficiency than traditional node capture attack methods. Moreover, they save 39, 11 and 50 % energy in compromising the networks.

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Notes

  1. In the rest of the paper, the function \(||\) is used to express the size.

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Acknowledgments

We want to deliver our gratitude to the reviewers of this article. Thank you very much. This research is sponsored in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61173179 and No. 61402078), Nuclear high base of major projects (No. 2012ZX01039-004-21) and Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (No. NCET-13-0083). This research is also sponsored in part supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. DUT14RC(3)090).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Software, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China

    Chi Lin, Guowei Wu & Lin Yao

  2. Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Chung Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan

    Chang Wu Yu

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  1. Chi Lin
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  2. Guowei Wu
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  3. Chang Wu Yu
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  4. Lin Yao
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Correspondence to Chi Lin.

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Lin, C., Wu, G., Yu, C.W. et al. Maximizing destructiveness of node capture attack in wireless sensor networks. J Supercomput 71, 3181–3212 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-015-1435-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-015-1435-7

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