CAT: Building Couples to Early Detect Node Compromise Attack in Wireless Sensor Networks

Node compromise attack is a serious threat to the successful deployment of wireless sensor networks. It is a multiple-stage attack, which usually consists of three stages: physically capturing and compromising sensor nodes; redeploying the compromised nodes back to the sensor network; and compromised sensor nodes rejoining the network and launching attack. Over the last few years, much previous work has tackled the node compromise attack in the late stage, either in the second stage or in the third stage. As a result, the protection measures are often ineffective. In this paper, we will make the first effort on addressing the node compromise problem in the first stage, and present a new couple-based scheme to detect the node compromise attack in early stage. Specifically, after sensor nodes are deployed, they first build couples in ad hoc pattern. Then, the nodes within the same couple can monitor each other to detect any node compromise attempt. Extensive simulation results are given to demonstrate the high detection rate of the proposed scheme.