The Research Of Nodes Authentication Protocol For Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are static network systems which are composed of numerous wireless micro-sensor nodes in the form of multi-hop and self-organization. The function of WSNs is to detect intelligence data within a fixed area, like environmental monitoring, behavior detection, etc. Security issues are especially important for military and commercial detection. However, the characteristics of WSNs and the finitude of the resource both contribute to the inapplicability of traditional security mechanisms.At present, authentication scheme for wireless sensor networks can be divided into two categories:scheme based on symmetric cryptography and scheme based on asymmetric cryptography. The former scheme which is represented by the Eschenauer-Gligor scheme requires large storage space and lacks anti-capture, whereas the latter which is represented by the TinyPK scheme requires large calculate consumption and lacks extensibility and robustness. Up till now, a lot of research works have been done for the purpose to reduce the calculate consumption of asymmetric cryptography and to design a safer and more reasonable key management scheme.In view of the above-mentioned problems, this thesis designs an authentication scheme for hierarchical wireless sensor networks based on zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) to improve its resilience and robustness. The main work of this thesis can be summarized as follows:Owing to the fact that wireless sensor node has low computing power and low resilience, this thesis firstly optimizes the existing algorithm and then uses the improved algorithm for the identity authentication of wireless sensor networks. As has already been proved, elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) algorithm is able to be applied for identity authentication of wireless sensor networks. This thesis reduces the computing time of existing algorithm based on elliptic curve discrete logarithm and compares the performance of this algorithm with that of ECC algorithm and RSA algorithm. In this algorithm, the authentication key of nodes will not be revealed during the conversation, which increases the difficulty for the attacker to get the authentication key, hence, it solves the problem that the original identity authentication scheme cannot resist further attack initiated by attacker with the use of previously captured nodes. In that way, the robustness of networks has been greatly improved.Furthermore, this thesis proposes a public key authentication protocol for distribute wireless sensor networks based on zero-knowledge proof. This protocol uses the LEAP key management scheme, which helps to save the storage space because nodes only need to store individual key, cluster key and authentication key. The authentication process of this scheme is divided into four steps:firstly, to pass the registration authentication of nodes and clusters; secondly, to pass the two-way authentication between nodes and clusters; thirdly, to establish the network topology; fourthly, to pass the roaming authentication between nodes and clusters. This thesis not only divides the interactive process into four steps but also analyzes the security and performance of this authentication protocol, like its ability to resist common attacks and its network latency compared with the original scheme. The results of the analysis shows that, this scheme has improved the safety of the authentication key and has achieved the mutual authentication between nodes and clusters, which ensures that it can resist more effectively those attacks like man-in-the-middle attack, sybil attack, replay attack, Dos attack, etc. The simulation of performance also shows that, the network latency of this scheme is shorter than the Benenson scheme which is based on ECC algorithm and the TinyPK scheme which is based on RSA algorithm.