A lightweight encryption and authentication scheme for wireless sensor networks

: The research of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) has recently received a strong boost from IEEE 802.15.4 task group, which focuses on the specifications for low rate wireless personal area networks. Another important driving force of WSNs is the ZigBee Alliance, an industrial alliance concentrating on WSNs. This paper addresses the security of WSNs with respect to the protocol stack defined by IEEE 802.15.4 and the ZigBee Alliance. Some security problems are identified and remedies are suggested. A new security architecture based on a lightweight public key scheme, called Derivable Public Key (DPK), is proposed. The DPK scheme significantly simplifies the public key operations and reduces the related cost by eliminating the need for distributing and storing public keys other than the one from the trust centre. It makes possible to support authentications for multicast/broadcast communications in WSNs, which are not available and account for many attacks so far.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: IJSN
• Authors: Jianliang Zheng, Jie Li, Myung J. Lee, Michael Anshel
• Keywords: IEEE 802.15.4 Task, IJSN 2006, Public Keys, ZigBee Alliance