An efficient collusion resistant security mechanism for heterogeneous sensor networks

Purpose Random key pre-distribution schemes are vulnerable to collusion attacks. The purpose of this research is to propose an efficient collusion resistant security mechanism for heterogeneous sensor networks (HSN). As large-scale homogeneous networks suffer from high costs of communication, computation, and storage requirements, the HSNs are preferred because they provide better performance and security solutions for scalable applications in dynamic environments. Design/methodology/approach We consider an heterogeneous sensor networks (HSN) consist of a small number of powerful high-end H-sensors and a large number of ordinary low-end L-sensors. However, homogeneous sensor networks (MSN) consists of only L-sensors. Since the collusion attack on key pre-distribution scheme mainly takes advantage of the globally applicable keys, which are selected from the same key pool, we update the key ring after initial deployment and generate new key rings by using one-way hash function on nodes’ IDs and initial key rings. Further, in the proposed scheme, every node is authenticated by the BS in order to join the network. Findings The analysis of the proposed scheme shows that even if a large number of nodes are compromised, an adversary can only exploit a small number of keys near the compromised nodes, while other keys in the network remain safe. Originality/value The proposed key management scheme outperforms the previous random key pre-distribution schemes by: a) considerably reducing the storage requirement, b) providing more resiliency against node capture and collusion attacks.