A Path Authenticating Method Using Bloom Filters against Impersonation Attacks on Relaying Nodes for Wireless Sensor Networks

For Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), a secret sharing scheme-based secure dispersed data transfer method has been proposed. While this method has resilience against node capture attacks, it is susceptible to node impersonation. We have already proposed an effective method for detecting impersonation attacks on source nodes. However, impersonation attacks on relaying nodes remain a threat to WSNs. With secure dispersed data transfer, impersonation attacks can cause the concentration of dispersed (encrypted) data. This concentration can lead to acquisition of the original secret data even if a secret sharing scheme-based secure dispersed data transfer method is used for encryption. To counter impersonation attacks on a relaying node, we must detect which paths include the impersonated relaying node. When the dispersed data transfer method can authenticate whether the data packets´ paths are correct, a source node can perform confidential communications with its destination node even if malicious relaying nodes are present. Instead of the detection method for impersonation attacks on source nodes, a path-authenticating method must determine which paths are legitimate and which are impersonated. In this paper, we propose a new detection method for impersonation attacks by relaying nodes using Bloom filters to authenticate paths. We have implemented our proposed method on a simulator, QualNet. We have conducted simulation experiments to confirm the effectiveness of our proposed method.