A novel coding scheme to implement signature based IDS in IP based Sensor Networks

In signature based IDS (intrusion detection systems), if incoming packet header matches a certain set of rules, its payload is scrutinized against a set of known patterns (also called signatures). As the number of patterns could range up to thousands, pattern matching consumes not only the storage but also the most of the CPU cycles to execute the complex pattern matching algorithms. Therefore, so far there is no signature based IDS which can work on resource constraint sensor nodes. This paper presents a dynamic coding mechanism, which helps in implementing a distributed signature based IDS (intrusion detection system) in IP-USN (IP based ubiquitous sensor networks). The proposed scheme also allows building of lightweight IDS in terms of storage, messaging and energy consumption, which make it appropriate for resource constrained sensor devices.