Securing Very Dynamic Groups and Data Aggregation in Wireless Sensor Networks

We present a new encryption mode of operation that allows nodes of a network to exchange messages securely (i.e. encrypted and authenticated) without sharing a common key or using public key cryptography. Our scheme is well adapted to networks, such as ad hoc, overlay or sensor networks, where nodes have limited capabilities and can share only a small number of symmetric keys. It provides privacy and integrity protection. We show that our proposal can be used in wireless sensor networks to send encrypted packets to very dynamic sets of nodes without having to establish and maintain group keys. These sets of nodes can be explicitly specified by the source or can be specified by the network according to some criteria, such as their location, proximity to an object, temperature range. As a result, a node can, for example, send encrypted data to all the nodes within a given geographical area, without having to identify the destination nodes in advance. Finally we show that our proposal can be used to implement a secure and scalable aggregation scheme for wireless sensor networks.