Activity Modelling and Comparative Evaluation of WSN MAC Security Attacks

Authors

  • Pranav M. Pawar Center for TeleInFrastruktur, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
  • Rasmus H. Nielsen Center for TeleInFrastruktur, Princeton, USA
  • Neeli R. Prasad Center for TeleInFrastruktur, Princeton, USA
  • Shingo Ohmori Center for TeleInFrastruktur, Yokosuka, Japan
  • Ramjee Prasad Center for TeleInFrastruktur, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13052/jcsm2245-1439.1234

Keywords:

wireless sensor networks (WSNs), media access control (MAC), activity modelling, security attacks

Abstract

Applications of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are growing tremendously in the domains of habitat, tele-health, industry monitoring, vehicular networks, home automation and agriculture. This trend is a strong motivation for malicious users to increase their focus on WSNs and to develop and initiate security attacks that disturb the normal functioning of the network in a severe manner. Such attacks affect the performance of the network by increasing the energy consumption, by reducing throughput and by inducing long delays. Of all existing WSN attacks, medium access control (MAC) layer attacks are considered the most harmful as they directly affect the available resources and thus the nodes’ energy consumption.

The first endeavour of this paper is to model the activities of MAC layer security attacks to understand the flow of activities taking place when mounting the attack and when actually executing it. The second aim of the paper is to simulate these attacks on hybrid MAC mechanisms, which shows the performance degradation of a WSN under the considered attacks. The modelling and implementation of the security attacks give an actual view of the network which can be useful in further investigating secure mechanisms to reduce the degradation of the performance in WSNs due to an attack. Lastly, the paper proposes some solutions to reduce the effects of an attack.

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Author Biographies

Pranav M. Pawar, Center for TeleInFrastruktur, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

Pranav M. Pawar graduated in Computer Engineering from Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Technological University, Maharashtra, India, in 2005 and received a Master in Computer Engineering from Pune Universiry, in 2007. From 2006 to 2007, was working as System Executive in POS-IPC, Pune,India. From January 2008, he has been working as an Assistant Professor in Department of Information Technology, STES’s Smt. KashibaiNavale College of Engineering, Pune. Currently he is working towards his Ph.D. in Wireless Communication from Aalborg University, Denmark. He published 17 papers at national and international level. He is IBM DB2 and IBMRAD certified professional. His research interests are Energy efficient MAC for WSN, QoS in WSN, wireless security, green technology, computer architecture, database management system and bioinformatics.

Rasmus H. Nielsen, Center for TeleInFrastruktur, Princeton, USA

Rasmus Hjorth Nielsen is an Assistant Professor at Center for TeleIn-Frastruktur (CTIF) at Aalborg University (AAU), Denmark and is currently working as a senior researcher at CTIF-USA, Princeton, USA. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Aalborg University in 2005 and 2009 respectively. He has been working on a number of EUand industrial funded projects primarily within the field of next generation networks where his focus is currently security and performance optimization.He has a strong background in operational research and optimization ingeneral and has applied this as a consultant within planning of large-scale networks. His research interests include IoT, WSNs, virtualization and othertopics related to next generation converged wired and wireless networks.

Neeli R. Prasad, Center for TeleInFrastruktur, Princeton, USA

Neeli Rashmi Prasad, Ph.D., IEEE Senior Member, Head of Research and Coordinator of Themantic area Network without Borders, Center for TeleInfrastruktur (CTIF), Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark. Director of CTIF-USA, Princeton, USA and leading IoT Testbed at Easy Life Lab and Secure Cognitive radio network testbed at S-CogitoLab. She received her Ph.D. from University of Rome “Tor Vergata”,Rome, Italy, in the field of “adaptive security for wireless heterogeneous networks” in 2004 and an M.Sc. (Ir.) degree in Electrical Engineering from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, in the field of“Indoor Wireless Communications using Slotted ISMA Protocols” in 1997. During her industrial and academic career for over 14 years, she has lead and coordinated several projects. At present, she is leading aindustry-funded projects on Security and Monitoring (STRONG) and on reliable self organizing networks REASON, Project Coordinator of European Commission (EC) CIP-PSP LIFE 2.0 for 65+ and social interaction and Integrated Project (IP) ASPIRE on RFID and Middleware and EC Network of Excellence CRUISE on Wireless Sensor Networks. She is co-caretakerof real world internet (RWI) at Future Internet. She has lead EC Clusterfor Mesh and Sensor Networks and Counsellor of IEEE Student Branch,Aalborg. She is Aalborg University project leader for EC funded IST IPe-SENSE on Wireless Sensor Networks and NI2S3 on Homeland and Airport security and ISISEMD on telehealth care. She is also part of the ECSMART Cities workgroup portfolio. She joined Libertel (now Vodafone NL),Maastricht, the Netherlands as a Radio Engineer in 1997. From November1998 till May 2001, she worked as Systems Architect for Wireless LANs in Wireless Communications and Networking Division of Lucent Technologies,Nieuwegein, the Netherlands. From June 2001 to July 2003, she was withT-Mobile Netherlands, The Hague, the Netherlands as Senior Architect for Core Network Group. Subsequently, from July 2003 to April 2004, she was Senior Research Manager at PCOM:I3, Aalborg.

Shingo Ohmori, Center for TeleInFrastruktur, Yokosuka, Japan

Shingo Ohmori is the president of YRP International Alliance Institute and professor and president of CTIF-Japan, Aalborg University, Denmark. He received the B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Tohoku, Japan, in 1973, 1975, and 1978, respectively. In 1978,he joined National Institute of Information and Communications Technology(NICT), and he resigned a Vice President of NICT in March 2009. During 1983–1984, he was a visiting research associate at the Electro ScienceLaboratory, the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. He is author of Mobile Satellite Communications(Artech House, 1998), a co-author of Mobile Antenna Systems Handbook (Artech House, 1994) and Co-Editor of Towards Green ICT(River Publishers, 2010). He was awarded the Excellent Research Prize from the Minister of Science and Technology Agency ofJapan in 1985, and the Excellent Research Achievements Prize of the IEICE in 1993. He was a guest professor of Yokohama National University, and now a guest professor of Dalian Technical University and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China. Dr. Ohmori is an IEEE Fellow and an IEICE Fellow (Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers, Japan).

Ramjee Prasad, Center for TeleInFrastruktur, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

Ramjee Prasad (R) is currently the Director of the Center for TeleIn-frastruktur (CTIF) at Aalborg University, Denmark and Professor, Wireless Information Multimedia Communication Chair.<>br He is the Founding Chairman of the Global ICT Standardisation Forumfor India (GISFI: www.gisfi.org) established in 2009. GISFI has the purpose of increasing of the collaboration between European, Indian, Japanese,North-American, and other worldwide standardization activities in the area of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and related application areas. He was the Founding Chairman of the HERMES Partnership –a network of leading independent European research centres established in 1997, of which he is now the Honorary Chair.
Ramjee Prasad is the founding editor-in-chief of the Springer International Journal on Wireless Personal Communications. He is member of the editorial board of other renowned international journals, including those of River Publishers. He is a member of the Steering, Advisory, and Technical Program committees of many renowned annual international confer-ences including Wireless Personal Multimedia Communications Symposium(WPMC) and Wireless VITAE. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), USA, the Institution of Electronics and Telecommunications Engineers (IETE), India, the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), UK, and a member of the Netherlands Electronics and Radio Society (NERG) and the Danish Engineering Society (IDA). He is also a Knight (“Ridder”) of the Order of Dannebrog (2010), a distinguishment awarded by the Queen of Denmark.

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Published

2012-04-25

How to Cite

1.
Pawar PM, Nielsen RH, Prasad NR, Ohmori S, Prasad R. Activity Modelling and Comparative Evaluation of WSN MAC Security Attacks. JCSANDM [Internet]. 2012 Apr. 25 [cited 2024 Nov. 24];1(2-3):204-25. Available from: https://journals.riverpublishers.com/index.php/JCSANDM/article/view/6107

Issue

2012: Vol 1 Iss 2-3

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