An intrusion detection system for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

In this paper we introduce a detection based security scheme for wireless sensor networks. Although sensor nodes have low computation and communication capabilities, they have specific properties such as their stable neighborhood information that allows for detection of anomalies in networking and transceiver behaviors of the neighboring nodes. We show that such characteristics can be exploited as key enablers for providing security to large scale sensor networks. In many attacks against sensor networks, the first step for an attacker is to establish itself as a legitimate node within the network. To make a sensor node capable of detecting an intruder a simple dynamic statistical model of the neighboring nodes is built in conjunction with a low-complexity detection algorithm by monitoring received packet power levels and arrival rates.