Towards securing networks of resource constrained devices: A study of cryptographic primitives and key distribution schemes

This thesis studies security issues pertaining to the rapidly growing area of wireless networks. These networks afford many benefits compared to their wired counterparts in terms of their usability in dynamic situations, mobility of networked devices, and accessibility to hostile or hazardous environments. However, these networks create unique challenges that must be addressed in order for them to be effective. The devices used in these networks are generally assumed to be limited in resources such as energy, memory, communications range, and computational ability. Additionally, these networks can operate in remote or hostile environments, placing them in danger of being damaged upon deployment or compromised by some malicious entity. This thesis addresses some of these issues in an attempt to increase the security of these networks while still maintaining acceptable levels of networking performance and resource usage.;We investigate new methods for data encryption on personal wireless hand-held devices. An important consideration for resource-constrained devices is the processing required to encrypt data for transmission or for secure storage. Significant latency from data encryption diminishes the viability of these security services for hand-held devices. Also, increased processing demands require additional energy for each device, where both energy and processing capability are limited. Therefore, one area of interest for hand-held wireless devices is the ability to provide data encryption while minimizing the processing and energy overhead as a cost to provide such a security service. We study the security of a wavelet-based cryptosystem and consider its viability for use in hand-held devices.;This thesis also considers the performance of wireless sensor networks in the presence of an adversary. The sensor nodes used in these networks are limited in available energy, processing capability and transmission range. Despite these resource constraints and expected malicious attacks on the nodes in the network, these networks require widespread, highly-reliable communications. Maintaining satisfactory levels of network performance and security between entities is an important goal toward ensuring the successful and accurate completion of desired sensing tasks. However, the resource-constrained nature of the sensor nodes used in these applications provides challenges in meeting these networking and security requirements. We consider link-compromise attacks and node-spoofing attacks on wireless sensor networks, and we consider the performance of various key predistribution schemes applied to these networks. We investigate the resilience of networks with regard to different adversarial attacks. Furthermore, we propose new key predistribution techniques to improve the security of wireless sensor networks.