Green firewall: An energy-efficient intrusion prevention mechanism in wireless sensor network

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are vulnerable to security attacks due to the broadcast nature of transmission and limited computation capability. After intrusion detection systems (IDSs) identifies an mobile intruder, IDS may broadcast the blacklist to all nodes in network. This method is energy inefficient because all nodes have to receive and forward the alarm packet so as to exhaust communication bandwidth and node energy, especially when there are a large number of sensor nodes in the network. This paper develops an energy efficient intrusion prevention mechanism in WSNs called green firewall. It can isolate an intruder with less overhead, and track the intruder to continually prevent the attack. The paper analyzes the overhead cost of the green firewall and compare it with the flooding broadcast method. Extensive analysis and simulations show that green firewall can prevent the attack and effectively reduce redundant alarm packet transmissions which results in less energy consumption.