a zkp-based identification scheme for base nodes in wireless sensor networks
Most of the published work on authentication mechanisms for wireless sensor networks establishes secure authentication for sensor nodes, but not for the base node that is in fact required to authenticate other nodes in the same network. This situation can lead to an attack whereby a malicious party masquerades as the base station and fraudulently authenticates other legitimate nodes to capture and/or inject messages within the network. The trust assumption in the existing literature with regard to base stations (i.e., implicitly trusting the base station) presents a serious security loophole. We address this problem by proposing a protocol that will help build a base station authentication mechanism in the framework of a one-hop mesh network and later extend it to a multi-hop framework. Our network would consist of a commissioning/installation device, and several forests of nodes (a base node and other nodes). The installation device would be responsible for deploying nodes in an area selected and would distribute information to them as necessary. We shall use a modification of the Guillou-Quisquater identification scheme as our Zero-Knowledge (ZK) protocol in conjunction with the ?TESLA protocol for authenticated broadcast, to authenticate the base station.
base stations wireless security zero-knowledge protocol security protocols sensor and ad hoc networks entity authentication guillou-quisquater protocol