EASS: Encryption and Authentication Based Security Scheme to Prevent Power Exhausting Attacks in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks are a type of network designed for situations which lack infrastructure and are resource constrained. Furthermore, they are dynamic in nature. As energy is sometimes in scarce supply for these networks, one of the foremost serious threats is, the Denial of Sleep (DeoS) attacks; such attacks fatigue the device nodes and reduce the device's overall lifetime. The schemes for these networks proposed in the past do not offer optimal power energy consumption. Hence, in this paper, we present an Encryption and Authentication based Security Scheme (EASS) to combat DeoS attacks. EASS is based on the use of SHA and symmetric cryptography to prevent power draining attacks, thereby extending the lifetime of the sensor nodes of a power-constrained network. The proposed lightweight security scheme imposes low computational requirements, and performs better than other solutions found in the literature. Simulation results indicate that our suggestion uses power intelligently and might decrease the efficacy of DeoS attacks.