Secure Data Aggregation with MAC Authentication in Wireless Sensor Networks

Recently, several data aggregation schemes based on privacy homomorphism encryption have been proposed and investigated on wireless sensor networks. These data aggregation schemes provide better security compared with traditional aggregation since cluster heads (aggregator) can directly aggregate the ciphertexts without decryption; consequently, transmission overhead is reduced. Based on our survey of existing research efforts for ensuring secure data aggregation, a novel approach that uses homomorphic encryption and Message Authentication Codes (MAC) to achieve confidentiality, authentication and integrity for secure data aggregation in wireless sensor networks is proposed. Our experiments show that our proposed secure aggregation method significantly reduces computation and communication overhead and can be practically implemented in on-the-shelf sensor platforms.