Security in wireless actor & sensor networks (WASN): towards a hierarchical re-keying design

Our work aims to address the challenging security issues in an important information infrastructure - large-scale and low-energy wireless actuator and sensor networks (WASN). Since WASNs have specific network constraints and data transmission requirements compared to general ad hoc networks and other wireless/wired networks, the security issues need to be tackled accordingly. We propose to seamlessly integrate WASN security with a promising routing architecture that is scalable and energy-efficient. To protect from active attacks in mobile sensor networks, we propose two-level re-keying/re-routing schemes that can not only adapt to a dynamic network topology but also securely update keys for each data transmission session. Moreover, to provide the security for the in-networking processing such as data aggregation in WASNs, we define a multiple-key management scheme in conjunction with the proposed tree-ripple-zone (TRZ) routing architecture.