Container communities: Anti-tampering Wireless Sensor Network for global cargo security

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is overwhelmed with the number of containers entering U.S.A. on a regular basis. Although containers are pre-screened and inspected at the time of shipment, it does not necessarily address all security risks. Containers stay en-route for long enough time that their contents can be tempered with or altered according to the procedures/needs of a terrorist attack. Moreover, considering the huge amount of shipments entering U.S. board daily, it is not practical to inspect every container again upon arriving U.S. ports. There is a urgent need to develop a protection system, such that the integrity of the containers can be persevered or at least the intrusion can be detected and properly handled. This paper proposes a design of a comprehensive solution that would monitor containers' integrity from the originating port to the destination port and report any intrusion event if it has taken place so the intruded container can be handled in an appropriate way. More important, the system itself needs to be secure and intrusion resistant. In the proposed system, intrusion detection sensors are deployed on each container, and form a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) to report intrusion incidents. A secure and reliable communication protocol has been developed to ensure not only the integrity but also the authenticity of the communication conducted among among sensor nodes. With in the proposed system, not only the intrusions can be identified and properly handled, but also the system itself is attack resistant by utilizing Wireless Sensor Networks in a smart fashion.