Maximizing destructiveness of node capture attack in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

As a special kind of attack, node capture attack in wireless sensor networks destroys the confidentiality and integrity of network traffic by physically capturing sensor nodes and extracting the cryptographic keys for eavesdropping the communications. However, previous researches pay little attention to the attacking efficiency, which leads to big attacking times and long execution time. In this paper, we propose a graph-based method for modeling the node capture attack on random key pre-distribution scheme. A full graph is constructed to specialize the compromising relationships between nodes and paths, and then the way of evaluating the destructiveness is introduced. The full graph attack (FGA) is designed to ensure the maximum destructiveness of each captured node so as to reduce the attacking times and shorten the execution time, simultaneously. To promote the performance of FGA in attacking efficiency, two optimal attacking algorithms, namely opti-graph attack (OGA) and path covering attack (PCA), are developed. Simulation results show that FGA, OGA and PCA reduce 38, 10 and 51 % attacking times, and enhance 39, 11 and 40 % attacking efficiency than traditional node capture attack methods. Moreover, they save 39, 11 and 50 % energy in compromising the networks.