Node Compromise Detection based on NodeTrust in Wireless Sensor Networks

Node compromisation is a potential threat to unattended wireless sensor network applications. An attacker can launch various types of attacks. Node Compromise Detection (NCD) and revocation methods should be invoked promptly to mitigate the damage. Broadly two categories of schemes exist for the NCD, namely, Behaviour based and Attestation based. Behaviour based schemes detect compromise nodes but cannot revoke. For example, Reputation trust management scheme named ZoneTrust does detection only. Attestation based schemes detect compromise nodes and revoke by software reconfiguration. ZoneTrust incurs a lot of overhead for NCD when software attestation is applied for each and every node in the untrust zone. In our paper, we propose a better scheme named NodeTrust, which does NCD with minimal overhead. Node Trust employs odd time arrival behaviour for NCD and software attestation is applied only for untrust nodes. Simulation results show that false positives are eliminated and NCD overhead is reduced substantially.