Data integrity and intrusion detection in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are emerging as cost effective solutions to critical applications such as remote monitoring of strategic installations covering large geographical areas, pollution control and disaster recovery. Their ability of self-organization, built-in redundancy and operational capabilities without needing human intervention make Wireless Sensor Networks suitable for such remote monitoring applications. But the unattended operation of WSNs and limited processing capabilities of the individual nodes make them vulnerable to a variety of security attacks, especially disruption of information flow or data corruption. For wired or wireless ad-hoc networks, there exist several automated systems for maintaining their functional integrity. Unfortunately, these strategies are not directly applicable to WSNs since ad-hoc networks are not as resource constrained as WSNs.This paper tries to develop distributed algorithms for detecting anomalous activity in information flow patterns in large-scale sensor networks. These algorithms will be used as building blocks of an integrated system for intrusion detection, attack isolation and fully automated response for assuring WSN survivability and information flow continuity.

I. Introduction

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) have become increasingly one of the most promising and interesting areas over the past few years. These networks may be very large systems comprised of small sized, low power, low-cost sensor devices that collect detailed information about the physical environment. Each device has one or more sensors, embedded processor(s), and low-power radio(s), and is normally battery operated. Examining each such single device individually might appear to have small utility. The value of sensor networks however, lies in using and co ordinating a vast number of such devices and allows the implementation of very large sensing tasks. In a usual scenario, these networks are deployed in areas of interest (such as inaccessible terrains or disaster sites) for fine-grained monitoring in various classes of applications.