Skip to main content

An Attack on Privacy Preserving Data Aggregation Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

  • Conference paper

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNSC,volume 7161)

Abstract

In-network data aggregation in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) provides efficient bandwidth utilization and energy-efficient computing. Supporting efficient in-network data aggregation while preserving the privacy of the data of individual sensor nodes has emerged as an important requirement in numerous WSN applications. For privacy-preserving data aggregation in WSNs, He et al. (INFOCOM 2007) have proposed a Cluster-based Private Data Aggregation (CPDA) that uses a clustering protocol and a well-known key distribution scheme for computing an additive aggregation function in a privacy-preserving manner. In spite of the wide popularity of CPDA, it has been observed that the protocol is not secure and it is also possible to enhance its efficiency. In this paper, we first identify a security vulnerability in the existing CPDA scheme, wherein we show how a malicious participant node can launch an attack on the privacy protocol so as to get access to the private data of its neighboring sensor nodes. Next it is shown how the existing CPDA scheme can be made more efficient by suitable modification of the protocol. Further, suitable modifications in the existing protocol have been proposed so as to plug the vulnerability of the protocol.

Keywords

  • Wireless sensor network
  • privacy
  • data aggregation
  • cluster-based private data aggregation (CPDA)
  • key distribution
  • colluding attack
  • malicious node

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (Canada)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (Canada)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   69.99
Price excludes VAT (Canada)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Acharya, M., Girao, J., Westhoff, D.: Secure Comparison of Encrypted Data in Wireless Sensor Networks. In Proc. of the 3rd International Symposium on Modeling and Optimization in Mobile, Ad Hoc, and Wireless Networks (WIOPT), Washington, DC, USA, pp. 47–53 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Akyildiz, I.F., Su, W., Sankarasubramaniam, Y., Cayirci, E.: Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey. Computer Networks 38(4), 393–422 (2002)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  3. Armknecht, F., Westhoff, D., Girao, J., Hessler, A.: A Lifetime-Optimized End-to-End Encryption Scheme for Sensor Networks Allowing In-Network Processing. Computer Communications 31(4), 734–749 (2008)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  4. Castelluccia, C., Chan, A.C-F., Mykletun, E., Tsudik, G.: Efficient and Provably Secure Aggregation of Encrypted Data in Wireless Sensor Networks. ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks 5(3) (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Chaum, D.: The Dining Cryptographers Problem: Unconditional Sender and Recipient Untraceability. Journal of Cryptology 1(1), 65–75 (1988)

    CrossRef  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  6. Eschenauer, L., Gligor, V.D.: A Key-Management Scheme for Distributed Sensor Networks. In: Proc. of the 9th ACM Conference on Computing and Communications Security, pp. 41–47 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Fontaine, C., Galand, F.: A Survey of Homomorphic Encryption for Nonspecialists. EURASIP Journal on Information Security 2007, Article ID 13801 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Girao, J., Westhoff, D., Schneider, M.: CDA: Concealed Data Aggregation for Reverse Multicast Traffic in Wireless Sensor Networks. In: Proc. of the 40th IEEE Conference on Communications (IEEE ICC), vol. 5, pp. 3044–3049 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  9. He, W., Liu, X., Nguyen, H., Nahrstedt, K., Abdelzaher, T.: PDA: Privacy-Preserving Data Aggregation in Wireless Sensor Networks. In Proc. of the 26th IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (IEEE INFOCOM), pp. 2045–2053 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Madden, S., Franklin, M.J., Hellerstein, J.M., Hong, W.: TAG: A Tiny Aggregation Service for Ad-Hoc Sensor Networks. In Proc. of the 5th Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), vol. 36 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Peter, S., Westhoff, D., Castelluccia, C.: A Survey on the Encryption of Convergecast Traffic with In-Network Processing. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing 7(1), 20–34 (2010)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  12. Sen, J.: A Survey on Wireless Sensor Network Security. International Journal of Communication Networks and Information Security (IJCNIS) 1(2), 59–82 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Westhoff, D., Girao, J., Acharya, M.: Concealed Data Aggregation for Reverse Multicast Traffic in Sensor Networks: Encryption, Key Distribution, and Routing Adaptation. IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing 5(10), 1417–1431 (2006)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

Copyright information

© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Sen, J., Maitra, S. (2012). An Attack on Privacy Preserving Data Aggregation Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks. In: Laud, P. (eds) Information Security Technology for Applications. NordSec 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7161. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29615-4_15

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29615-4_15

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-29614-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-29615-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)