An Authentication Framework for Wireless Sensor Networks using Identity-Based Signatures

Abstract

In Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), authentication is a crucial security requirement to avoid attacks against secure communication, and to mitigate DoS attacks exploiting the limited resources of sensor nodes. Resource constraints of sensor nodes are hurdles in applying strong public key cryptographic based mechanisms in WSNs. To address the problem of authentication in WSNs, we propose an efficient and secure framework for authenticated broadcast/multicast by sensor nodes as well as for outside user authentication, which utilizes identity based cryptography and online/offline signature schemes. The primary goals of this framework are to enable all sensor nodes in the network, firstly, to broadcast and/or multicast an authenticated message quickly; secondly, to verify the broadcast/multicast message sender and the message contents; and finally, to verify the legitimacy of an outside user. The proposed framework is also evaluated using the most efficient and secure identity-based signature schemes.