PVFS: A Probabilistic Voting-based Filtering Scheme in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we study two important attacks in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs): the fabricated report with false votes attack; the false votes on real reports attack. Most of the existing works address the first attack while leaving an easy way for the attackers to launch the second. We draw our motivation from this and propose a Probabilistic Voting-based Filtering Scheme (PVFS) to deal with both of these attacks simultaneously. With the general en-route filtering scheme as the underlying model, PVFS combines cluster-based organisation, probabilistic key assignment, and voting methods to curtail these attacks. Through both analysis and simulation, we demonstrate that PVFS can achieve strong protection against both the aforementioned attacks while maintaining a sufficiently high filtering power.