Security in Wireless Sensor Networks - Security for Wireless Sensor Networks Using Identity-Based Cryptography - page 19

Chapter 2
Security in Wireless
Sensor Networks
In This Chapter
• The various kinds of attacks on WSN
• The attack taxonomy for WSN
• Threats to privacy, control, and availability
• Countermeasures to attacks on WSN
2.1 Introduction
Wireless sensor networks have been a promising approach to many diverse applications
and are playing a major role in the upcoming age of intelligent networking. However,
with the increase in popularity of such networks, there is an ever-increasing demand
for better security. In many military applications, for instance, sensor networks are
involved in mission-critical tasks, and security therefore is a top priority in such situa-
tions. In addition, resource, computing, and environmental constraints on WSN (dis-
cussed in Chapter 1) pose new challenges in securing such networks. Security in WSN
is especially challenging due to the inherent broadcast nature of wireless communica-
tion. Any radio equipment can participate, either passively or actively, in any form of
radio communication, by tuning the equipment to the same frequency band as that of
the communicating nodes.
The demand for WSN is increasing even faster with the introduction of miniatur-
ization technology. Consequently, there has been mass production of sensor nodes with
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