An automatic test platform to verify the security functions for secure WIA-PA wireless sensor networks

Min Wei,Keecheon Kim

doi:10.1177/1550147716676094

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks are already employed in numerous applications including military, industry, and health. Among the several inherent limitations in wireless sensor network, security is a critical concern. The declared security functions of wireless devices should be well verified. In this study, a security testing method based on security levels is proposed for wireless sensor networks. In addition, an experimental security testing platform for WIA-PA-based wireless sensor networks is implemented. The test results show that the platform is a feasible platform for assessing device security levels in wireless sensor networks.

Highlights

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been widely used in many fields such as military, industry, agriculture, business, and environmental science
Traditional network security technology cannot be used in WSNs because of its inherent limitations
We propose a security testing method that verifies the security of protocol implementations automatically and assesses the security levels of WSN devices

Summary

Introduction

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been widely used in many fields such as military, industry, agriculture, business, and environmental science. Some established security evaluation frameworks are not available for WSN, because they do not take the specific characteristics of a WSN into account, such as the constrained resources, and the specific types of WSN devices (leaf, router, and coordinator). These studies focused on security protocol testing and involved specific applications. Verifying security over protocol implementations and assessing security levels of the WSN devices remain open problems. We address this important security problem of WSNs. In addition, we propose a security testing method that verifies the security of protocol implementations automatically and assesses the security levels of WSN devices. Section ‘‘Platform implementation and result analysis’’ analyzes security performance of the

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Result analysis

Conclusion and future work