Abstract
This work presents the design, implementation and evaluation of a
security ar-
chitecture, targeted for smart environments that consist of ordinary, everyday
objects with embedded wireless sensor network nodes. The security solution is
integrated into a platform-independent middleware layer, that facilitates
appli-
cation development for these kinds of smart spaces. Consequently, the security
architecture provides a constant level of security for applications, running
on top
of the middleware, that is independent of the underlying networking and hard-
ware resources. To support the design process, a state-of-the-art survey on
the
current security solutions in wireless sensor networks is provided.
In general level, the architecture consists of the middleware-level security
solu-
tion and a security management tool. The goal of the middleware-level security
solution is to establish secure channels between the nodes of the network. To
achieve this goal, the general security requirements of wireless sensor
networks
and the unique requirements set by the middleware had to be taken into
account.
As a result, the middleware-level solution was designed to utilize only
symmet-
ric cryptography. Due to the unavailability of the chosen security mechanisms
for the used platform, a block cipher algorithm and a mode of operation were
implemented as part of the work.
The security management tool was designed to provide a novel, close prox-
imity communications-based solution to the initial key distribution in the
smart
environment. The idea of the approach is to have the security management tool
running in the user’s mobile device, which is then used to perform the
necessary
securitymanagement operations in the network fromtouching distance of a node.
The approach conveniently solves the problem of confidentiality
associated with
the security management operations.
The results of the evaluation proved the basic functionalities of the whole
se-
curity architecture to function as designed. The resource consumption of the
middleware-level security solution turned out to be larger than the most
light-
weight solutions currently available. However, our solution builds on a
stronger
cryptographic foundation. The applicability of the close proximity key
distribu-
tion with the security management tool provided positive results
Original language | English |
---|---|
Qualification | Master Degree |
Awarding Institution |
|
Place of Publication | Oulu |
Publisher | |
Publication status | Published - 2010 |
MoE publication type | G2 Master's thesis, polytechnic Master's thesis |
Keywords
- Software security
- smart spaces
- resource-constrained systems