Providing Source Location Privacy Research Articles

A Confounding-Domain Randomized Approach for Providing Source Location Privacy Preservation for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have advanced technologically, allowing for a wide range of Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The Internet of Things (IoT) provides a platform for connecting items to achieve a specific goal with minimal human intervention. Various practical sectors, such as environmental monitoring and defense, demand IoT support with maximum object connectivity, and low human participation, yet face security concerns from strong unauthorized entities. As location privacy is one of these major vulnerabilities, continual monitoring of contextual information may lead the attacker to the asset's position. The location privacy of the source node that detects and reports the presence of an event is critical. In this study, we provide a source location privacy (SLP) preservation technique based on confounding domain angular routing (SLP-CDAR) that attempts to improve security while increasing network lifespan. To avoid traffic analysis attacks, packets first undergo a random walk, followed by a perplexing time domain routing that creates additional diversionary pathways. The packets are then routed via angle routing, followed by a random path, and finally delivered to the base station using the forward random walk technique. The experimental results prove that the proposed scheme enhances the location privacy strength while providing an improved network lifetime, and a swift increase in the entropy.

Protecting Source Location Privacy in IoT-Enabled Wireless Sensor Networks: The Case of Multiple Assets

A major limitation to the use of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in asset monitoring applications is security and privacy, particularly the privacy of source location information. In this article, we develop two phantom routing-based solutions to provide source location privacy for the case of multisource/asset scenario—the case that has received very little attention in the literature. The idea of phantom routing is to relay the packets to a distant node in a random fashion to obfuscate the traffic flows and confuse the attacker. The first technique phantom routing-based backward random walk (PRBRW) uses a combination of backward random walk (RW) and a greedy forwarding approach to route the packets to the base station (BS). Although the first approach has better performance improvements in terms of capture ratio and safety period it hampers the lifetime of the network and has a poor entropy metric. To better this problem, an improved phantom routing scheme phantom routing-based L-path RW (PRLPRW) is proposed. The second technique has three phases: 1) pure RW; 2) L-walk; and 3) greedy walk. This technique performs well in terms of capture ratio, safety period, and entropy metrics. The improvement in network lifetime is 10-folds and entropy is 477-folds when compared with PRBRW. The performance is evaluated using the developed analytical models and compared with the baseline protection-less scheme shortest path routing (SPR). It is observed that PRBRW and PRLPRW, respectively, have 60- and 73-fold improvements in terms of capture ratio when compared with SPR, whereas existing phantom routing-based pure RW and forward RW techniques, respectively, have only 54- and 34-fold improvements.

Enhanced source location privacy mechanism for WSNs

Source location privacy in wireless sensor networks is an important security issue when a wireless sensor network is used in monitoring valuable assets or the source is a sensitive object. However, the open nature of a sensor network makes relatively easy for an adversary to detect message flows and trace back the message hop-by-hop to it source by moving in the reverse direction of the flows. Many schemes have been proposed recently to provide source location privacy but all performs poorly, because either with insufficient safety period or high energy consumption or data delivery delay. In this paper, after analysing privacy weakness of the cyclic entrapment method (CEM), we propose an enhanced scheme by introducing two mechanisms to provide strong location privacy against skilled adversary. The proposed strategy is principally based on false paths instead of loops and ensures that the arrival angle formed between the real and the real path is minimal. We evaluate our scheme based on two criteria: safety period, and ratio delivery. The simulation results show that our scheme improve safety period while keeping packets delivery ratio similar as in CEM method.

A novel routing strategy to provide source location privacy in wireless sensor networks

In order to secure the source location privacy when information is sent back to the base station in wireless sensor network, we propose a novel routing strategy which routes the packets to the base station through three stages: directional random routing, h-hop routing in the annular region and the shortest path routing. These stages provide two fold protections to prevent the source location from being tracked down by the adversary. The analysis and simulation results show that proposed scheme, besides providing longer safety period, can significantly reduce energy consumption compared with two baseline schemes.

Source Location Privacy Using Fake Source and Phantom Routing (FSAPR) Technique in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of numbers of small nodes that can sense, collect, and disseminate information for many different types of applications. One of these applications is subject tracking and monitoring, in which the monitored subjects often need protection. For instance, a WSN can be deployed to monitor the movement of a panda in a large park. The panda needs protection from different adversaries. An adversary might trace the messages in the WSNs to find the source node that sensed the panda, with the final aim of killing the panda. Hence the question is: how do we hide the location of the source node from the adversary? In other words, the problem is to provide privacy to the source node: Providing source location privacy (SLP) is complicated by the fact that there are many factors that influence the effectiveness of a solution. The problem with most of the existing solutions is that they only provide SLP in a few specific scenarios. We propose a distributed solution for source location privacy using the Fake source and Phantom routing (FSAPR) protocol.

Providing Source Location Privacy Against Active Global Attackers in Wireless Sensor Networks

Providing Source Location Privacy Against Active Global Attackers in Wireless Sensor Networks

Providing Source Location Privacy in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of numerous small nodes that can sense, collect, and disseminate information for many different types of applications. One of these applications is subject tracking and monitoring, in which the monitored subjects often need protection. For instance, a WSN can be deployed to monitor the movement of a panda in a national park. The panda needs protection from different adversaries, such as hunters and poachers. An adversary might trace the messages in the WSN to find the source node that sensed the panda, with the final aim of killing the panda. Hence the question is: how do we hide the location of the source node from the adversary? This question is relevant in several of the scenarios related to this application, such as patient monitoring and battlefield surveillance. In other words, the problem is to provide privacy to the source node: source location privacy. In this paper, we provide a survey of the state of the art in source location privacy. We first discuss the key concepts in source location privacy, such as anonymity, unobservability, safety period, and capture likelihood. Then, we present an overview of the solutions that provide source location privacy within a WSN, in relation to the assumptions about the adversary's capabilities. In particular, we summarize the concepts and solutions, which are categorized based on the core techniques used to provide source location privacy. We mention the limitations of the algorithms as found in the literature, classify the solutions based on their approach, and provide an overview of the assumptions on the adversarial capabilities related to each solution.