ARCMA: Attack-Resilient Collaborative Message Authentication in Wireless Sensor Networks

Data Centric Storage (DCS) is a well-known data storage and query processing mechanism for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), storing sensed data or their metadata at pre-specified locations. Queries issued by mobile users are sent to, and processed at, such storage nodes. However, securing DCS is very difficult because WSNs usually operate in an unattended environment and hence are subject to node-capture attacks. Even after capturing a single node, an attacker may be able to subvert the entire system by using the keying material extracted from the captured node. To remedy/alleviate the above problem, we propose Attack-Resil-ient Collaborative Message Authentication (ARCMA), in which sensor nodes collaboratively authenticate messages to be sent to, or received from, remote nodes. In ARCMA, each node belongs to one of k groups, and constructs an Authentication Tree (AT) which is formed with k nodes, each from a distinct group. Each node collaborates with the other nodes in its AT to authenticate messages. We propose two heuristics, called MIN and OPT, to construct ATs. Our analysis shows that the security of ARCMA does not degrade until the attacker capture k or more nodes. We also evaluate the overhead of constructing ATs and the cost of authenticating messages using ATs.