A new approach for the prevention of sinkhole attack in mobile wireless sensor networks
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Authors
Alomirah, Yasser Abdulrahman
Author ORCID Profiles (clickable)
Degree
Master of Computing
Grantor
Unitec, Te Pūkenga – New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology
Date
2023
Supervisors
Sarrafpour, Bahman
Type
Masters Thesis
Ngā Upoko Tukutuku (Māori subject headings)
Keyword
wireless sensor networks (WSN)
mobile technology
computer security
sinkhole attacks
encryption algorithms
algorithms
mobile technology
computer security
sinkhole attacks
encryption algorithms
algorithms
ANZSRC Field of Research Code (2020)
Citation
Alomirah,Y. A. (2023). A new approach for the prevention of sinkhole attack in mobile wireless sensor networks (Unpublished document submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Computing). Unitec, Te Pūkenga – New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology https://hdl.handle.net/10652/6033
Abstract
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Main research question is: Is it possible to prevent a sinkhole attack on MWSN using a combination of Blowfish and RSA algorithms?
Then it was broken down into the following questions:
Q1: What would be the overhead of using the Blowfish algorithm on MWSN?
Q2: What would be the overhead of using the RSA algorithm on MWSN?
Q3: What is the impact of the key size on the performance of the Blowfish algorithm?
Q4: What is the impact of the block size on the performance of the Blowfish algorithm?
Q5: How much is the combination of the RSA and Blowfish algorithms more accurate than a pure Blowfish algorithm in the prevention of Sinkhole attack in MWSN?
Nowadays, the usage of wireless sensor networks (WSN) is rapidly growing all over the world. For many applications, these networks are deployed in harsh and unreachable environments. As a result, this type of network is faced with many problems. Energy consumption and security are two main challenges of WSN. There are many types of attacks on these networks, of which one of the most serious is Sinkhole attack. This attack is one of the impersonation attacks through which a malicious node advertises the best route to the base station and misguides its neighbours to encourage them to use that route more frequently. The malicious node can alter the messages or drop them or cause an unnecessary delay before forwarding them to the base station.
A subclass of WSN in which the nodes can move and frequently change their locations is called mobile wireless sensor network (MWSN). This type of WSN is more vulnerable to Sinkhole attack as the nodes regularly change their positions and neighbours.
In this thesis, a new lightweight encryption-based method is proposed to prevent Sinkhole attack in MWSN. The proposed method is aimed at reducing energy consumption and increasing the accuracy of the prevention of Sinkhole attack simultaneously. A hybrid encryption algorithm is used, which employs the Blowfish algorithm for encrypting messages to ensure data integrity and security of MWSN against Sinkhole attack. The Blowfish algorithm consumes low resources and is very fast, which makes it ideal for MWSN. To ensure a secure sharing of the Blowfish key between sender and receiver, at the beginning of the process, the sender uses the RSA algorithm to encrypt the Blowfish key. The receiver decrypts the message using its built-in private key.
The experimental results show that while the proposed method significantly enhance the security of MWSN and effectively prevents Sinkhole attack, it does not impose significant overhead on the routing protocol.
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