SKEP & SEEKDP: Towards Secure and Energy-Efficient Key Exchange and Distribution in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Security and Energy are important issues when wireless sensor network (WSN) is deployed in harsh
environments. WSN security becomes real challenge for the researchers because these networks are
vulnerable to security attacks due to the broadcast nature of transmission. Due to the limited memory,
CPU, and battery power of sensor nodes, traditional asymmetric-key distribution protocols are expensive and rather infeasible. Thus, only a very few conventional protocols can readily be used in sensor networks and key management schemes should be designed carefully to reduce computations power over the sensor node as well. In this paper we analyse existing Key Management Protocols like SPINS, SEKEN, SNAKE, Security Architecture for Mobile WSNs and BROSK for their vulnerabilities against Denial of-Service attacks. In WSNs, where the most protocols working on point-to-point handshaking
procedures to negotiate link dependent keys, this influences the scalability of the network, we present a
novel protocol SKEP to construct link dependent keys by unicasting. We also propose SEEKDP a security
protocol that prevents certain attacks, distribute keys, exchange information in an efficient manner and
provide security by consuming less energy of regular sensor node.