Secure multi-hop network programming with multiple one-way key chains

Abstract

Current network programming protocols provide an efficient way to update the program image running on sensor nodes without physical access to them. However, given the open environment in which sensor nodes are deployed, securing network programming is a challenging task. Existing work addressing this issue either lack consideration of securing multi-hop network programming protocols, or are not cost-efficient. To our knowledge, none of them have evaluated the power consumption. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme to secure multi-hop network programming protocols using multiple one-way hash chains. This scheme is resilient to malicious program image injection by the compromised nodes and it secures multi-hop propagation of program images for sensor nodes. Based on the most popular network programming protocol, Deluge, an overhead analysis on this schemes is given. In addition, our scheme is implemented in TinyOS and a performance evaluation in terms of latency and energy consumption is presented.