Data Authentication Scheme for Unattended Wireless Sensor Networks against a Mobile Adversary

An Unattended Wireless Sensor Network (UWSN) is a type of sensor network where a trusted sink visits each node periodically to collect the data. Due to the offline nature of this network, every node has to secure its data until the next visit of the sink which makes the network susceptible of attacks focusing on the data collected. In this work, we focus on the data authentication in the presence of a mobile adversary aiming to modify the data without being detected. We propose a data authentication scheme which uses inexpensive cryptographic primitives and few message exchanges. The proposed scheme is analyzed both mathematically and using simulations proving that the proposed scheme is better than the previous schemes in terms of security and communication overhead.