To establish secure (point-to-point and or broadcast) communication channels among the nodes of a wireless sensor network is a fundamental task. To this end, a plethora of (socalled) key pre-distribution schemes have been proposed in the past. All these schemes, however, rely on shared secret(s), which are assumed to be somehow pre-loaded onto the sensor nodes. In this paper, we propose a novel method for secure initialization of sensor nodes based on a visual out-of-band channel. Using the proposed method, the administrator of a sensor network can distribute keys onto the sensor nodes, necessary to bootstrap key pre-distribution. Our secure initialization method requires only a little extra cost, is efficient and scalable with respect to the number of sensor nodes. Moreover, based on a usability study that we conducted, the method turns out to be quite user-friendly and easy to use by naive human users.
The initialization method that we propose in this paper is similar to the device pairing schemes that use an OOB channel. Thus, we also review most relevant device pairing methods and argue whether or not they can be extended for the application of sensor node initialization. In their seminal work, Stajano and Anderson @cite_24 proposed to establish a shared secret between two devices using a link created through a physical contact (such as an electric cable). As pointed out previously, this approach requires interfaces not available on most sensor motes. Moreover, the approach would be unscalable.
@cite_24
2099042427
In the near future, many personal electronic devices will be able to communicate with each other over a short range wireless channel. We investigate the principal security issues for such an environment. Our discussion is based on the concrete example of a thermometer that makes its readings available to other nodes over the air. Some lessons learned from this example appear to be quite general to ad-hoc networks, and rather different from what we have come to expect in more conventional systems: denial of service, the goals of authentication, and the problems of naming all need re-examination. We present the resurrecting duckling security policy model, which describes secure transient association of a device with multiple serialised owners.