Mitigating Node Capture Attack in Random Key Distribution Schemes through Key Deletion

Abstract

Random Key Distribution (RKD) schemes have been widely accepted to enable low-cost secure communications in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). However, efficiency of secure link establishment comes with the risk of compromised communications between benign nodes by adversaries who physically capture sensor nodes. The challenge is to enhance resilience of WSN against node capture, while maintaining the flexibility and low cost features of RKD schemes. We address this problem by proposing an effective technique, namely KDel, which don’t require any special-purpose hardware or expensive computations. We demonstrate that our approach significantly increases the resilience of RKD schemes against node capture at the cost of a little communications, while maintaining network connectivity at the same level. Moreover, our scheme is generally applicable as it can improve the resilience of any RKD scheme.