Enhancing Wireless Sensor Network Security with Quantum-Enabled Elliptic Curve Cryptography

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), comprising of tiny nodes with limited energy, computational and communication resources, are being widely used in various application areas ranging from pollution and weather monitoring to military. Even though every application may not require data to be exchanged in a secure manner, few WSN applications may have certain security requirements. The data is encrypted by a sender and sent over the wireless links and the same is decrypted at the receiver. To meet this purpose, symmetric key cryptographic (SKC) algorithms may be used. Such SKC primitives require keys to be made available before carrying out the data transfer between the nodes. Alternately, Public Key Cryptographic techniques, such as RSA algorithm can be considered. Even though, RSA is a popular algorithm providing good security level, it is computationally intensive involving large key sizes. The RSA can not be used in WSNs, as the nodes have limited resources. Presently, it is infeasible to implement the RSA algorithm using any of the WSN nodes commercially available. Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), another public key cryptographic (PKC) algorithm providing same level of security with smaller key size requirements, can be used as an alternative in order to provide security in WSN applications. ECC encryption and decryption use domain parameters, which includes the Generator point to be published. In most of the outdoor WSN applications, the deployment of the nodes is random and the nodes could be captured and an attacker could launch man-in-middle (MIM) attack, and break the public key thereby leading to security breach in the network. A technique to overcome such an attack is proposed in this work and the same is compared with two other similar approaches.

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) use sensors to monitor phenomena such as temperature, humidity, groundwater levels and transmit this information to a base station using wireless channels. WSNs find applications in military, ecological, and health-related areas. A hybrid wireless sensor network includes two networks: an ad hoc wireless network and a wireless sensor network. The nodes in the ad hoc network act as base stations conducting surveillance on the WSN. In this dissertation, we focus on the key management issues in hybrid wireless sensor networks. The key management issues in hybrid wireless sensor networks can be divided into three categories according to which layer they affect: ad hoc network layer, wireless sensor network layer, and integrated cross layer. At the ad hoc network layer, we propose two elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem (ECDLP) based schemes for secure group communication (SGC). Unlike the vast majority of secure group communication protocols using the discrete logarithm problem (DLP) based Diffie-Hellman as the basic key agreement protocol, our solutions use the ECDLP-based Diffie-Hellman protocol. We also extend our research on secure group communication to the wireless sensor network layer. We formally define the grouping and secure group communication problems in WSNs. We further propose and evaluate four centralized group rekeying (CGK) schemes for SGC in WSNs. Our proposed key management protocol at the integrated cross layer, mKeying, includes two schemes, a key distribution scheme, KeyDist, supporting multiple base stations in the network, and a centralized key revocation scheme, KeyRev, for removing compromised sensor nodes from the sensor network. Through these protocols for key distribution, key revocation, and group communication, we present an integrated approach to provide security in hybrid wireless sensor networks.

Wireless sensor networks described as an emerging new technology with a very promising future. Advances made in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are the merging of advanced electronic and wireless technologies. Due to the popularity gained by the wireless environment, Security is the main concern. Node authentication without compromising lifespan of the networks is practically a daunting task. This research work introduces a new model, IBE-ECC that administers the energy of sensor nodes with faster authentication process. Signature verification model is deployed to achieve faster authentication process. Nevertheless, the public key-based strategies eliminate the security process but their verification process takes larger time. Therefore, authentication speed is a major constraint of our research endeavor. The proposed scheme is design to achieve high security and fast authentication with energy efficiency. It uses identity-based encryption on elliptic curve cryptography and a user authentication with an energy efficient key management. Further, to improve the speed of the authentication, it reduces the signature size so that it would accelerate signature verification faster. Hence, the proposed scheme will provide a secure key management, energy efficiency, fast authentication and additionally, computation overhead and communication costs are minimized. Finally, the experimental result demonstrates that the proposed strategy obtains 4797 ms higher execution efficiency and 45. 53% lower computation costs than existing schemes.

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are used in many applications in military, environmental, and health-related areas. These applications often include the monitoring of sensitive information such as enemy movement on the battlefield or the location of personnel in a building. Security is important in WSNs. However, WSNs suffer from many constraints, including low computation capability, small memory, limited energy resources, susceptibility to physical capture, and the use of insecure wireless communication channels. These constraints make security in WSNs a challenge. In this paper, we try to explore security issue in WSN. First, the constraints, security requirements and attacks with their corresponding countermeasures in WSNs are explained. Individual sensor nodes are subject to compromised security. An adversary can inject false reports into the networks via compromised nodes. Furthermore, an adversary can create a Gray hole by compromised nodes. If these two kinds of attacks occur simultaneously in a network, some of the existing methods fail to defend against those attacks. The Ad-hoc On Demand Distance (AODV) Vector scheme for detecting Gray-Hole attack and Statistical En-Route Filtering is used for detecting false report. For increasing security level, the Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) algorithm is used. Simulations results obtain so far reduces energy consumption and also provide greater network security to some extent.

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a spatially distributed network. It contains many numbers of distributed, self-directed, small, battery powered devices called sensor nodes or motes. In recent years the deployment of WSN in various application domains are growing in a rapid pace as with the upcoming boom of Internet of Things (IoT) and Internet of Everything (IoE). However, the effectiveness of the WSN deployment is restricted due to the constrained computation and power source. Hence, many researchers have been proposing new approaches and models to improve the efficiency of the domain specific WSN deployment procedures. Though, many research communities addressing various issues in WSN deployment, still the privacy and security of such networks are susceptible to various network attacks. Thus, it is necessary to practice different models for authentication and privacy preservation in a highly dynamic resource constrained WSN environment to realize the effectiveness and efficiency of the deployment. Hence, this paper addressing an authentication scheme that can reduce energy consumption without compromising on security and privacy. In order to provide a light weight authentication mechanism, this paper proposing an authentication mechanism for WSN deployment by combining the features of Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and Hexagonal numbers. The feature of ECC is used to reduce the key size and the effectiveness of generating hexagonal numbers is used for minimizing the energy consumption in a resource constrained WSN environment. The results of the proposed approach are evaluated with the different authentication models and the results were indicating that the proposed approach can perform better than the other approaches.

With hardware support and software optimization, Public Key Cryptography (PKC) has been announced feasible on micro sensors recently [1][2][22][23]. A number of experiments proved that the Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is more suitable for resource constraint motes compared with RSA [2][3]. But even ECC based protocols still cost too much energy. In this paper, we propose C4W, an identity-based public key infrastructure specially designed for wireless sensor networks (WSNs), in which all nodes can generate others' ECC public keys directly from their identities. Without certificates, no energy will be consumed for certificates communication and verification, which makes C4W especially energy efficient. C4W uses a protocol without certificates to realize mutual authentication and key agreement. Compared with a simplified SSL (SSSL) protocol using an abbreviated certificate, C4W consumes lower than 35% energy, and the communication consumption of C4W is only 28.5% of that consumed by SSSL. Furthermore, the energy analysis of C4W illuminates that the expensive public key computational cost is almost neglectable compared with the heavy communication consumption in a large-scale WSNs, which gives the asymmetric key management in WSNs a bright future.

With the deepening of the research and development in the field of embedded devices, the paradigm of the Internet of things (IoT) is gaining momentum. Its technology’s widespread applications increasing the number of connected devices constantly. IoT is built on sensor networks, which are enabling a new variety of solutions for applications in several fields (health, industry, defense, agrifood and agro sectors, etc.). Wireless communications are indispensable for taking full advantage of sensor networks but implies new requirements in the security and privacy of communications. Security in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is a major challenge for extending IoT applications, in particular those related to the smart-agro. Moreover, limitations on processing capabilities of sensor nodes, and power consumption have made the encryption techniques devised for conventional networks not feasible. In such scenario, symmetric-key ciphers are preferred for key management in WSN; key distribution is therefore an issue. In this work, we provide a concrete implementation of a novel scalable group distributed key management method and a protocol for securing communications in IoT systems used in the smart agro sector, based on elliptic curve cryptography, to ensure that information exchange between layers of the IoT framework is not affected by sensor faults or intentional attacks. In this sense, each sensor node executes an initial key agreement, which is done through every member’s public information in just two rounds and uses some authenticating information that avoids external intrusions. Further rekeying operations require just a single message and provide backward and forward security.

Quantum cryptography, and especially quantum key distribution (QKD), is steadily progressing to become a viable tool for cryptographic services. In recent years we have witnessed a dramatic increase in the secure bit rate of QKD, as well as its extension to ever longer fibre- and air-based links and the emergence of metro-scale trusted networks. In the foreseeable future even global-scale communications may be possible using quantum repeaters or Earth–satellite links. A handful of start-ups and some bigger companies are already active in the field. The launch of an initiative to form industrial standards for QKD, under the auspices of the European Telecommunication Standards Institute, described in the paper by Laenger and Lenhart in this Focus Issue, can be taken as a sign of the growing commercial interest.

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are gaining immense popularity as a result of their wide potential applications in industry, military, and academia such as military surveillance, agricultural monitoring, industrial automation, and smart homes. Currently, WSN has garnered tremendous significance as it is has become the core component of the Internet of Things (IOT) area. Modern-day applications need a high level of security and quick response mechanism to deal with the emerging data trends where the response is measured in terms of latency, throughput, and scalability. Further, critical security issues need to be considered due to various types of threats and attacks WSNs are exposed to as they are deployed in harsh and hostile environments unattended in most of the mission critical applications. The fact that a complex sensor network consisting of simple computing units has similarities with specific animal communities, whose members are often very simple but produce together more sophisticated and capable entities. Thus, from an algorithmic viewpoint, bio-inspired framework such as swarm intelligence technology may provide valuable alternative to solve the large scale optimization problems that occur in wireless sensor networks. Self-organization, on the other hand, can be useful for distributed control and management tasks. In this chapter, swarm intelligence and social insects-based approaches developed to deal with a bio-inspired networking framework are presented. The proposed approaches are designed to tackle the challenges and issues in the WSN field such as large scale networking, dynamic nature, resource constraints, and the need for infrastructure-less and autonomous operation having the capabilities of self-organization and survivability. This chapter covers three phases of the research work carried out toward building a framework. First phase involves development of SIBER-XLP model, Swarm Intelligence Based Efficient Routing protocol for WSN with Improved Pheromone Update Model, and Optimal Forwarder Selection Function which chooses an optimal path from source to the sink to forward the packets with the sole objective to improve the network lifetime by balancing the energy among the nodes in the network and at the same time selecting good quality links along the path to guarantee that node energy is not wasted due to frequent retransmissions. The second phase of the work develops a SIBER-DELTA model, which represents Swarm Intelligence Based Efficient Routing protocol for WSN taking into account Distance, Energy, Link Quality, and Trust Awareness. WSNs are prone to behavior related attacks due to the misbehavior of nodes in forwarding the packets. Hence, trust aware routing is important not only to protect the information but also to protect network performance from degradation and protect network resources from undue consumption. Finally, third phase of the work involves the development of SIBER-DELTAKE hybrid model, an improved ACO-KM-ECC trust aware routing protocol based on ant colony optimization technique using K-Medoids (KM) algorithm for the formation of clusters with Elliptical Curve Cryptography (ECC). KM yields efficiency in setting up a cluster head and ECC mechanism enables secure routing with key generation and management. This model takes into account various critical parameters like distance, energy, link quality, and trust awareness to discover efficient routing.

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) facilitate real time monitoring in many commercial and military surveillance applications. These applications automatically call for a high level of security in such networks. Public key cryptographic (PKC) techniques such as Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) provide a flexible interface to ensure security, requiring no pre-distribution of keys. However, ECC is very compute-intensive, owing to the computationally complex elliptic curve point multiplication operation. This work presents a technique to speed up the elliptic curve point multiplication operation, achieving a cost reduction of about 48% over the double and add algorithm and about 40% over the width-w Non Adjacent Form (NAF) algorithm. Additionally, results of its software implementation are presented.

In the modern digital era, where cyber-attacks, data breaches, and digital spying threaten global security, conventional cryptographic systems face increasing challenges. The rapid development of quantum computing has amplified these threats by undermining the security foundations of classical encryption algorithms such as RSA (Rivest–Shamir–Adleman) and ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptography), both of which depend on the computational hardness of factorization and discrete logarithmic problems. Quantum cryptography, rooted in the principles of quantum mechanics, introduces a transformative approach that ensures theoretically unbreakable security. This paper explores the theoretical foundations, current technological developments, challenges, and future prospects of quantum cryptography. It emphasizes the transition from mathematical security to physical security, highlighting quantum key distribution (QKD), quantum random number generation, and post-quantum cryptographic frameworks. The study concludes that quantum cryptography is not merely a futuristic ideal but a necessary evolution for safeguarding the digital future in a quantum-enabled world

Communication driven era demands the use of new cryptographic protocols and hardware with reduced computational and structural complexity for resource constrained applications. This paper presents the hardware implementation of a key management scheme based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) for applications in wireless sensor networks. Security-critical applications in WSNs rely on ECC for the key management since it offers increased security per bit of the key. This paper proposes efficient hardware architecture for the implementation of EC based key exchange in such a way that number of pre-stored values for key exchange and overall hardware complexity of the system are optimised without affecting security level. Algorithms for pseudo random sequence generation and message authentication code based on cryptographic one way function of elliptic curve point multiplication are developed. A single point multiplication unit based on Lopez-Dahab algorithm is time shared for pseudo random sequence generation and authentication to reduce the overall hardware complexity. Thus the proposed implementation scheme supports increased number of node addition phases. Evaluation of the design is done in terms of storage and hardware complexity. Proposed system gives 23.76% hardware efficiency over the existing EC based system. The design for GF(2163) has been simulated in ModelSim PE 10.4, synthesized in Xilinx ISE 14.7 and successfully implemented on Kintex-7 KC705 Evaluation Board.

The Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are characterized by their widespread deployment due to low cost, but the WSNs are vulnerable to various types of attacks. To defend against the attacks, an effective security solution is required. However, the limits of these networks’ battery-based energy to the sensor are the most critical impediments to selecting cryptographic techniques. Consequently, finding a suitable algorithm that achieves the least energy consumption in data encryption and decryption and providing a highly protected system for data remains the fundamental problem. In this research, the main objective is to obtain data security during transmission by proposing a robust and low-power encryption algorithm, in addition, to examining security algorithms such as ECC and MD5 based on previous studies. In this research, the Energy Saving and Securing Data algorithm (ESSD) algorithm is introduced, which provides the Message Digest 5 (MD5) computation simplicity by modifying the Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) under the primary condition of power consumption. These three algorithms, ECC, MD5, and ESSD, are applied to Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) and Threshold-sensitive Energy Efficient Sensor Network Protocol (TEEN) hierarchical routing algorithms which are considered the most widely used in WSNs. The results of security methods under the LEACH protocol show that all nodes are dead at 456, 496, and 496, respectively, to ECC, MD5, and ESSD. The results of security methods under the TEEN protocol show that the test ends at 3743, 4815, and 4889, respectively, to ECC, MD5, and ESSD. Based on these results, the ESSD outperforms better in terms of increased security and less power consumption. In addition, it is advantageous when applied to TEEN protocol.

The wireless communication nature of remotely deployed sensor nodes make the attacks more easily to be happened in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). But traditional security algorithms are infeasible in WSNs due to the limited computing, communication power, storage, band width and energy of sensor nodes. So energy efficient secure data aggregation schemes are necessary in resource constrained WSNs. Concealed Data Aggregation (CDA) based on privacy homomorphism (PH) gives a critical solution for energy efficient secure data aggregation in WSNs. PH based algorithms allow aggregation to be happened on cipher texts. Thus, it eliminates the power consuming decryption operations at the aggregator node for the data aggregation and further encryption for the secure transmission of aggregated data. It also avoids the aggregator node from the burden of keeping the secret key information and thereby it achieves energy efficiency and reduces the frequency of node compromise attacks in aggregator nodes. Among the CDA techniques, asymmetric PH based CDA techniques are exploring due to their combination with elliptic curve cryptography having reduced key size. We present an overview of asymmetric concealed data aggregation techniques that achieve both end to end data confidentiality and non delayed data aggregation.

With the development of the wireless communication technology and the sensor technology, the wireless sensor network (WSN) has been used in many applications. However, WSNs suffer from some inherent weaknesses because of restricted communication and hardware capabilities. To achieve essentially secure communication in WSNs, a few of key management models have been proposed since it is the crucial important building block for all security goals in WSNs. Recently, Alagheband and Aref proposed a signcryption scheme and used it to construct a dynamic key management model for hierarchical heterogeneous sensor networks. They also proved that their signcryption scheme is provably secure if the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem is infeasible. Unfortunately, by giving concrete attacks, we indicate that Alagheband and Aref’s signcryption scheme is not secure in their secure model. The analysis also shows that their key management model is not secure. To solve those weaknesses, we also proposed an improved signcryption scheme.