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IA-CTR: Integrity-Aware Conventional Counter Mode for Secure and Efficient Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks

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Abstract

The goal of a secure communication protocol is to ensure the data integrity, data secrecy, authentication, and replay protection. Now, because of the low computational capability, tiny memory, and limited energy resources’, designing a secure sensor network communication protocol, is indeed a challenging task. In order to ensure data secrecy in wireless sensor networks (WSN), most of the existing state of the art solutions, are merely emphasized on the conventional encryption modes like CTR, CBC, etc. On the other hand, for offering data integrity, they need to rely upon a secure MAC. Therefore, to ensure both the privacy and integrity of the WSN data, they need to perform at least 2n block encryptions, where n represents the number of blocks. In this article, we propose a variant of the conventional CTR mode, called integrity-aware counter (IA-CTR) mode, which requires only n + 1 of block encryptions to ensure both the privacy and integrity of the WSN message on a single pass.

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Acknowledgments

This work is financially supported by the National Science Council of Republic of China (Taiwan), under Contract NSC MOST 103-2221-E-006-177. The authors would like to thank the National Science Council of Republic of China for their benign supports.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan, ROC

    Tzonelih Hwang & Prosanta Gope

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  1. Tzonelih Hwang
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  2. Prosanta Gope
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Correspondence to Tzonelih Hwang.

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Hwang, T., Gope, P. IA-CTR: Integrity-Aware Conventional Counter Mode for Secure and Efficient Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks. Wireless Pers Commun 94, 467–479 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-015-3096-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-015-3096-5

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