Chinese Journal of Computers   Full Text
Title	Hash Chain Based Random Keys Pre-Distribution Scheme in Wireless Sensor Networks
Authors	SU Zhong LIN Chuang REN Feng-Yuan
Address	(Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084)
Year	2009
Issue	No.1(30—41)
Abstract &   Background	Abstract Key management is the cornerstones of many security mechanisms and services in wireless sensor networks. Random pre-distribution of secret key is one of the most practical schemes in such networks due to its instinct property. These schemes, however, face a challenging problem, that is, it can not acquire the high network connectivity probability and reach strong resilience against the nodes compromise simultaneously. To address this limitation, a hash chain based random key pre-distribution scheme is proposed in the paper. Nodes only need to preload a few of secret keys and can establish pair-wise keys amongst its neighboring nodes with high probability through tuning some system parameters, such as the length of hash chain, the number of common auxiliary nodes, the number of hash chain. Moreover, the proposed scheme can maintain strong security strength even though there are a lot of compromised nodes. The theoretical analysis and simulation experiments show that the proposed scheme performs well in terms of network connectivity and security strength. Keywords hash chain; pair-wise key; pre-distribution; security; wireless sensor network Background This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (60673187, 60773138, 60573122), the National High-Tech Research and Development Plan of China (2006AA01Z117), the National Grand Fundamental Research 973 Program of China (2006CB303000) and finished in the QoS Group, Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University. Key management is timely important issue in secure wireless sensor networks and meets many new challenges due to the sensor nodes’ stringent resource constraints. Although the deterministic key pre-distribution schemes can ensure that every pair of nodes establish pair-wise key directly, those schemes may induce extreme requirement in term of computation, storage, communication and energy. The random key pre-distribution schemes are the most suitable schemes for WSN, however, most of these schemes fail to provide high network connectivity performance and strong resilience against nodes compromised simultaneously. One reason is that the keys which consist of the key pool are less relevant. Hence, the authors try to improve the correlation of keys and propose a hash chain based random key pre-distribution scheme to address the limitation. Theoretical analysis and simulation results demonstrate that the correlation improvement of keys can reach the high network connectivity performance and maintain strong resilience against nodes compromised even though there are a lot of compromised nodes. We believe that the constructions can bring random key pre-distribution technology into the realm of the practical.