A Review of Physical Attacks and Trusted Platforms in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have shown great promise as the emerging technology for data gathering from unattended or hostile environment. The advancement in micro-electro-mechanical sensor technology, wireless communication technology and the recent energy scavenging have greatly contributed to the widespread acceptance of WSN related applications. In addtiion, the design of sensors that are small, low cost, low power and combined with its ability to be left unattended has made it more viable and indirectly promotes its popularity for future solutions in various real-life challenges. However, in sensor network, the nodes are physically accessible by adversaries and have been known to expose cryptographic materials such as the encryption keys and other important data in the sensor nodes. Acknowledging the severity of such attacks, this paper first presents the review on physical attacks followed by the introduction of trusted platform with protected memory that not only protect sensor node's sensitive credentials but also provide a concrete way to trust nodes in the dedicated wireless sensor network. Finally, summarization of proposed IBE_Trust framework is presented and briefly discussed