A Survey on Security in Wireless Sensor Networks: Attacks and Defense Mechanisms

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a promising technology that has attracted the interest of research in the last decade. Security is one of the fundamental issues in sensor networks since sensor nodes are very resource constrained. An attacker may modify, insert, and delete new hardware and software components to the system where a single node, a specific part of the sensing area, and the whole network may become inoperable. Thus, the design of early attack detection and defense mechanisms must be carefully considered. In this chapter, the authors survey attacks and their defense mechanisms in WSNs. Attacks are categorized according to the related protocol layer. They also investigate the open research issues and emerging technologies on security in WSNs.