Unpredictable Software-based Attestation Solution for node compromise detection in mobile WSN

Abstract

Recent advancements in micro-computing have provided an exponential increase in the capabilities of a wide range of devices and have allowed the implementation of complex mobile wireless sensor networks (mWSNs). Common battery-powered sensor nodes require security techniques that eliminate redundant processing overhead for resource conservation, without compromising the overall network performance. To address this issue, this paper presents USAS: Unpredictable Software-based Attestation Solution, a node compromise detection algorithm in mWSNs. USAS deploys dynamic node attestation chains to decrease checksum computation time by almost 48% for selective attested nodes. By decentralizing the network, the attestation is unpredictable, preventing malicious data injection. The performance of USAS is estimated in terms of node compromise detection rate.