Secure data aggregation in wireless sensor networks: A watermark based authentication supportive approach

In-network processing presents a critical challenge for data authentication in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Current schemes relying on Message Authentication Code (MAC) cannot provide natural support for this operation since even a slight modification to the data invalidates the MAC. Although some recent works propose using privacy homomorphism to support in-network processing, they can only work for some specific query-based aggregation functions, e.g. SUM, average, etc. In this paper, based on digital watermarking, we propose an end-to-end, statistical approach for data authentication that provides inherent support for in-network processing. In this scheme, authentication information is modulated as watermark and superposed on the sensory data at the sensor nodes. The watermarked data can be aggregated by the intermediate nodes without incurring any en route checking. Upon reception of the sensory data, the data sink is able to authenticate the data by validating the watermark, thereby detecting whether the data has been illegitimately altered. In this way, the aggregation-survivable authentication information is only added at the sources and checked by the data sink, without any involvement of intermediate nodes. Furthermore, the simple operation of watermark embedding and complex operation of watermark detection provide a natural solution of function partitioning between the resource limited sensor nodes and the resource abundant data sink. In addition, the watermark can be embedded in both spatial and temporal domains to provide the flexibility between the detection time and detection granularity. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme can successfully authenticate the sensory data with high confidence. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.