Discipline: Computer Sciences and Information Management
Subcategory: Computer Science & Information Systems
Clayton Hatathlie - Scottsdale Community College, Scottsdale, AZ
Co-Author(s): Jesus Santana, University of Puerto Rico Arecibo Melania Amaya, Yihao Li, and W. Eric Wong, University of Texas at Dallas
Wireless sensor networks are considered one of the swiftest developing research topics in the technological area for the coming decade. It is predicted that the Internet of Things (IoT) will expand exponentially to approximately 20 billion devices by the year 2020. The urge to find ways to realize this prediction is growing, and for this expansion to become a reality, the need for a safe and reliable wireless sensor network cannot be overlooked. Security has been a major concern in these networks due to restrictions on resources in the sensor nodes and insufficient monitoring during their operation. In this work, we provide an overview of security vulnerabilities in wireless sensor networks. Specifically, we concentrate on two types of attacks, namely node compromise attacks and denial of service attacks. In addition, we observe the components, functions, and some of the constraints of sensor nodes. We also investigate two main protocols, IEEE 802.15.4 and ZIGBEE, including how they work together to join sensor nodes and network side services. In the end, we conclude our work with a view of possible solutions to address node compromise and denial of service attacks. The purpose of our work is to conduct a survey that can be used as a baseline to help future researchers develop better security mechanisms within the wireless sensor network.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): I thank W. Eric Wong and Yihao Li for their help and guidance. Funding was provided by an NSF grant, hosted by the University of Texas at Dallas.
Faculty Advisor: W. Eric Wong, ewong@utdallas.edu
Role: I was the team leader of our group. I set our first draft outline and knew a detailed amount of each group members section. My responsibility was to write the introduction and my focus was the types of wireless sensor network attacks. I classified each attack either under a node compromise or denial of service attack. I described how sensor nodes were tampered with and the consequences from the separate attacks.