An untraceable and anonymous password authentication protocol for heterogeneous wireless sensor networks

Ensuring secure access to sensitive information in a wireless sensor networks (WSNs) remains a topic of ongoing research challenge, partly due to the wide range of potential attacks and attack vectors. In this paper, we reveal a previously unpublished vulnerability in the authentication scheme for ad hoc WSN of Chang et al.'s. Specifically, we reveal that the authentication phase of the scheme does not defend against various known attacks. We then propose a robust authentication scheme for WSNs, designed to provide security against known active and passive attacks. We then evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme using AVISPA.