Securing distributed data storage and retrieval in sensor networks

Sensor networks have been an attractive platform for pervasive computing and communication. However, they are vulnerable to attacks if deployed in hostile environments. The past research of sensor network security has focused on securing information in communication, but how to secure information in storage has been overlooked. Meanwhile, distributed data storage and retrieval have become popular for efficient data management in sensor networks, which renders the absence of schemes for securing stored information to be a more severe problem. Therefore, we propose three evolutionary schemes, namely, the simple hash-based (SHB) scheme, the enhanced hash-based (EHB) scheme, and the adaptive polynomial-based (APB) scheme, to deal with the problem. All the schemes have the properties that only authorized entities can access data stored in the sensor network, and the schemes are resilient to a large number of sensor node compromises. The EHB and the APB schemes do not involve any centralized entity except for a few initialization or renewal operations, and thus support secure, distributed data storage and retrieval. The APB scheme further provides high scalability and flexibility, and hence is the most suitable among the three schemes for real applications. The schemes were evaluated through extensive analysis and TOSSIM-based simulations. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.