Attacks, Vulnerabilities, and Their Countermeasures in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks

WSN are a type of wireless network which consist of small, battery powered sensor nodes. These are used in unmanned places where there exists a need for data collection without any kind of human intervention. WSN gathers and communicates the data through wireless communication as shown in figure 1. The sensor nodes are very small but contain power, storage and communication facilities which are in turn limited as discussed by Akyildiz I.F., Su W., Sankarasubramaniam Y. and Cayirci E (2002).

Further advanced development in wireless communication has empowered the development of low cost, minimal power and multifunctional sensor nodes. Each sensor node has sensing capability, data processing unit and communicating components. The Sensor network uses protocols and algorithms that possess self- organizing capabilities.

Figure 1.

Wireless Sensor Network

The added feature of sensor network is the cooperative process of sensor nodes. The sensor nodes send the processed data instead of sending the raw data which is sensed and transmit the required data to the network. The important constraints on sensor nodes are the requirement of low power consumption for the purpose of computation and communication. Sensor nodes use the inbuilt trade off mechanism for long network lifetime with low cost power system as discussed by Ian F. Akyildiz, Weilian Su, Yogesh Sankarasubramaniam, and Erdal Cayirci (2002) Since the sensor nodes of WSN are capable of gathering and sending data, they can be deployed in any distributed environment as discussed by Desai Shivani, Nair Tarjni Vyas Anuja R., Jain Hunar (2017) and are used in many applications as discussed by Akyildiz I.F., Melodia T., and Chowdhury K.R.(2007) like smart buildings, medical care applications, industry, defense and internet of things applications as discussed in Ayoub Benayache, Azeddine Bilami Sami Barkat and Pascal Lorenz Hafnaoui Taleb (2019) and C. Thilagavathi, Dr.P. Saveetha, C. Willson Joseph, K. Anusree, R. Roshni Menon (2018). This chapter aims to discuss and analyze the various security requirements, vulnerabilities possible in wireless sensor networks. The attacks that can occur and its counter measures are also discussed. Finally a framework to improve security in wireless sensor networks is given which has been designed keeping in mind the integration of WSN in modern technologies like internet of things, internet of vehicles and various artificially intelligent automations.