Hash Chains Sensornet: A Key Predistribution Scheme for Distributed Sensor Networks Using Nets and Hash Chains1

Key management is an essential functionality for a security protocol; particularly for implementations to low cost devices of a distributed sensor networks (DSN)–a prototype of Internet of Things (IoT). Constraints in resources of constituent devices of a low cost IoT (example: sensors of DSN) restricts implementations of computationally heavy public key cryptosystems. This leads to adaptation of the novel key predistribution technique in symmetric key platform to efficiently tackle the key management problem for these resource starved networks. Initial key predistribution schemes (KPS) use random graphs; while later ones exploit combinatorial approaches that assure predictable design properties. Combinatorial designs like a (v, b, r, k)–configuration that forms a μ–CID are effective schemes to design a KPS. A net in a vector space is a set of cosets of certain kind of subspaces called partial spread. A μ(v, b, r, k)–CID can be formed from a net. In this paper, we propose a KPS for DSN, named as Sensornet, using a net. We observe that any deterministic KPS suffer from “smart attack” and hence devise a generic method to eliminate such attacks. Resilience of a KPS can improve by clever application of a Hash Chains technique introduced by Bechkit et al. We improve our Sensornet to obtain a new Hash Chains Sensornet (HC(Sensornet)) by the applications of these two generic methods. Effectiveness of Sensornet and HC(Sensornet) in term of crucial metrics in comparison to prominent schemes has been theoretically established.