Management and applications of trust in Wireless Sensor Networks: A survey

• We present a detailed survey on trust models that are geared towards WSNs.
• The applications of trust models are presented.
• Various types of malicious attacks against trust models are categorized.
• Robustness of trust models against malicious attacks is analyzed.
• Several trust best practices for developing a robust trust model are listed.

Wireless Sensors Networks (WSNs) are susceptible to many security threats, and because of communication, computation and delay constraints of WSNs, traditional security mechanisms cannot be used. Trust management models have been recently suggested as an effective security mechanism for WSNs. Considerable research has been done on modeling and managing trust. In this paper, we present a detailed survey on various trust models that are geared towards WSNs. Then, we analyze various applications of trust models. They are malicious attack detection, secure routing, secure data aggregation, secure localization and secure node selection. In addition, we categorize various types of malicious attacks against trust models and analyze whether the existing trust models can resist these attacks or not. Finally, based on all the analysis and comparisons, we list several trust best practices that are essential for developing a robust trust model for WSNs.