Research On The Key Management In Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor network (WSN), which integrates the technologies of sensor, micro-electro-mechanism system (MEMS), wireless communication and distributed computing, is a next generation of networks. It has found wide applications and is well worthy of research.We give a description of the structure of wireless sensor networks, the configuration of sensor nodes and the difference between wireless sensor networks and traditional networks. Also, we analyze the security threats, security goals and a trust model of this specific network environment. This paper emphasizes on the issue of key management. We give a detailed introduction to the evaluation of key management under the environment of wireless sensor networks and several key distribution schemes, including KDC-based key distribution scheme, distribution scheme based on public key cryptography, and key pre-distribution schemes based on random probability. Then we summarize several classic protocols of key distribution, present the ideas behind them, and analyze the performance of these protocols. Finally, this paper introduces methods of group key management for extremely large-scale network, which can enlarge the maximum supportable network size. We analyze a simple group key management scheme, point out a security flaw of the scheme and give some improvements.An important authentication protocol, mainly for Worldwide Web (Web for short) security is the Secure Sockets Layer Protocol (SSL). We give our understandings of the SSL protocol and experiences in using OpenSSL Toolkit. We provide an overview level explain on the messages exchanged in the handshake protocol, aiming to understand how to implement the services of confidentiality, authentication and integrity in communications. A program design framework for implementing SSL protocol using OpenSSL Toolkit is given, while some problems arising from the production implementation process and solutions to them are presented.