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Dealing with the secure time synchronization and man-in-the-middle attacker in mobile sensor networks

Published: 29 March 2012 Publication History

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are resource-constrained self-organizing networks that are often deployed in hostile and inaccessible environments in order to collect data. Benign system faults such as malfunctioning hardware, software glitches, and environmental hazards may impact overall system reliability but can often be mitigated by appropriate fault tolerance mechanisms. However, in an adversarial context, more subtle and difficult challenges to reliability can be faced and must be considered. This paper focuses the well-studied man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack problem where an attacker tampers with the characteristics of the network by mediating a link between legitimate nodes that does not have the properties required for correct network operation. This paper develops attack scenarios for unique network topologies, presents a timing and location-based analysis of MITM attack scenarios for each, and characterizes the limits of MITM detectability via timing analysis as a function of distance.

Reference

[1]
Chiang, J., Haas J., Hu, Y., Kumar, P., and Choi, J., Fundamental limits on secure clock synchronization and man-in-the-middle detection in fixed wireless networks, in Proceedings of INFOCOM. IEEE, 2009, pp.1962--1970.

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  • (2016)SRDA: A Secure Routing and Data Aggregation Approach for Wireless Smart MeterJournal of Communications10.12720/jcm.11.1.108-117Online publication date: 2016

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  1. Dealing with the secure time synchronization and man-in-the-middle attacker in mobile sensor networks

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    ACMSE '12: Proceedings of the 50th annual ACM Southeast Conference
    March 2012
    424 pages
    ISBN:9781450312035
    DOI:10.1145/2184512
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 29 March 2012

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    Author Tags

    1. chip-scale atomic clock
    2. distributed sensor networks
    3. man-in-the-middle attack
    4. security
    5. time synchronization
    6. wireless sensor networks

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    ACM SE '12
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    ACM SE '12: ACM Southeast Regional Conference
    March 29 - 31, 2012
    Alabama, Tuscaloosa

    Acceptance Rates

    ACMSE '12 Paper Acceptance Rate 28 of 56 submissions, 50%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 502 of 1,023 submissions, 49%

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    Cited By

    View all
    • (2016)SRDA: A Secure Routing and Data Aggregation Approach for Wireless Smart MeterJournal of Communications10.12720/jcm.11.1.108-117Online publication date: 2016

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