Computer Network Security And Attacks On Wireless Sensor Network, Hacking Issues

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is emerging technology and it is used in lot of industries and day to day life. It is used in various areas like e-commerce, accessing the internet, collaborative - computing, e-mail, and new avenues for advertising and information distribution. As the use of WSN is increasing the threat related to hacking is also increasing in WSN. The intent of this term paper is to find out security and hacking issues with Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) and also discuss the solution about it. Also in this term paper we have tried to explain experimental analysis and discussion related, also the future work

Security Goals

When dealing with security in WSNs, we mainly focus on the problem of achieving some of all of the following security contributes or services:

1. Confidentiality: Confidentiality refers to data in transit to be kept secret from eavesdroppers. Here symmetric key ciphers preferred for their low power consumption.
2. Integrity: Integrity measures that the received data is not altered in transit by an adversary.
3. Authentication: Authentication enables a node to ensure the identity of the peer with which it is communicating.
4. Data Freshness: It suggests that the data is recent, and it ensures that no old messages have been replayed.
5. Authorization: It ensures that only authorized nodes can be accessed to network services or resources.

These goals are not ensured by traditional security techniques. Therefore, new security measures are needed to address the specific security challenges of wireless sensor networks.

Security Challenges

We summarize security challenges in sensor networks as follows:

1. Minimizing resource consumption and maximizing security performance
2. Sensor network deployment renders more link attacks.
3. Wireless communication characteristics render traditional wired-based security schemes unsuitable.
4. Large scale and node mobility make the affair more complex.
5. Node adding and failure make the network topology dynamic.

Literature Survey

Wireless sensor network is a network which can be made up of autonomous sensors and these sensors are spatially distributed where they are used to sense environmental conditions within the network. These sensed data are passed to the main location through the network. Such networks are bidirectional and enables sensor activity control. Nowadays the WSNs are used in many applications like process management, healthcare monitoring, industrial monitoring, environmental and earth sensing, combat field surveillance and so on. The WSN consists of several sensor nodes, where each sensor node is connected with another.

Sensors sense the data from the environment and those sensed data are converted into digital format by using analogue to digital converter. A microcontroller is an electronic circuit, acts as an interface between power source and sensors. A transceiver is used to transmit and receive the data to and from the other nodes in the network and an external memory which is used to store the data. Sensor nodes in the wireless sensor network are grouped into one called cluster. A wireless sensor network consists of several clusters; a sensor node (leaf sensor node) joins a cluster based on receiving signal strength. Every cluster has a leader sensor node called cluster head (CH) sensor node. The CH sensor node has a highest capability than the leaf sensor node. Select a CH sensor node in a cluster either by the sensor nodes in that cluster or previously assigned by the network designer and the membership of that CH sensor node may be determined or variable. The CH sensor node aggregates the data from the leaf sensor nodes and these aggregated data are passed to a base station or a command centre. Clustering technique has many advantages like network scalability support, maximize the life time of the network, minimize the size of routing table, conservation of communication bandwidth, stabilize the topology of network, and reduce the energy consumption.

A sensor node consists of five layers. They are physical, data link, network, transport and application layer. Physical layer tends to data encryption, signal deflection, modulation, frequency selection and generation. Data link layer tends to data multiplexing, data frame detection, medium access, error control, point to point and multipoint connectivity. Network layer tends to assign address and packet forwarding. Transport layer ensures reliable transmission of packets. Application layer is responsible for data requisition, data provision and interaction with end user.

Clustering in WSNs achieve network scalability and management, which increases lifetime of sensor node and reduces bandwidth consumption. Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy protocol balances the energy consumption in cluster based WSNs. This protocol rotates cluster head nodes randomly among the sensor nodes in the network to balance the energy consumption. Therefore adding security to this protocol is defiance. This type of protocols affect from orphan node problem since it uses symmetric key management for security. If a sensor node does not share a pairwise key with other sensor nodes in its preloaded key ring then the orphan node problem occurs. Due to this problem sensor node cannot joins with any cluster. So that the sensor node elected itself as a cluster head and orphan node problem increases the number of cluster heads in the network. Therefore this problem increases transmission overhead and energy consumption.

Instead of using symmetric key management system for security apply the asymmetric key management system to solve the orphan node problem in the network. Asymmetric key management system offers digital signature service. This service provides digital certificate which is used to bind the identification of signer and public key. The identity based digital signature scheme draw an entity’s public key from its identity details such as name or identity number based on the hardness of factoring integers from identity based cryptography.

Introduction

Computer Networks Security (CNS) is becoming more important nowadays because of increasing demand for internet based technologies. The increase in user’s privacy concerns is related to the increasing use of the internet. Hackers tries to break the security because they think that all the information should be free, so there should not be anything like tinker property or there should not be any security, and all data or information should be available to everyone without cost. Now on various websites like functions like transaction, there are lots of private details of uses associated with it, so we just can’t give access of information to any of the unauthorised person, because hacker can use this data and use for some other work or he might take out money from account if he /she knows the transaction details of the person. so in this term paper we tried to learn hacking issues related to wireless networks.

Today everyone use computer networks to share resource and to exchange information. This computer network can be classified into many types based on theproperties like protocol, topology and architecture. Topology defines the physical arrangements of the nodes of a network. Widely known topologies are bus, ring, star, mesh and hybrid. In bus topology all the nodes will connected using a single cable (this cable will act as a backbone). Damaging the cable will cause network failure.

The information can be easily hacked by hackers by taping the cable anywhere in the network. This is a simple and cheap topology to implement. In ring topology the nodes of a network will connect via a ring like cable. Comparing bus topology it is good in speed and information can be hacked easily by taping the cable.

In star topology the network devices like hub or switch will be used to connect all the nodes of a network. Tapping of single cable may not be useful to hack all the information of all the nodes if the network uses switches, because switch forwards the frame / bits to a specific port, which is connected to specific node of the network. If a network uses hub then taping a single cable is enough to monitor or hack the information of a network. Mesh topology connects all the nodes of a network to each other. It is expensive because it needs more number of cables and network adapters (If there are N nodes then it needs (N*(N-1))/2 cables to connect whole network). Here the advantage is failure of single cable may not affect the network performance and the network will be more stable. During the information exchange the data will travel in multiple path, so hacking is hard in Mesh topology. Widely known architectures are peer-to peer and client-server. In peer to peer all nodes can communicate with each other without any specific server node to control. It is suitable for small companies or institutions where the number of nodes is less.

Generally this type of architecture used to share resources. The client-server architecture is good in case of security comparing peer-to- peer. Because of security reasons many big companies uses this type of architecture.

Types of Attacks on Wireless Sensor Network

Jamming Attacks

In this type of attack, by deploying enough number of Jamming devices can prevent the Communication of the sensor network over the wireless medium. By using carrier frequency of jamming high energy Signals can disrupted by time of transmission. Nearby area of jamming device are prone to higher noise which give the easiest way to find jamming Devices.

Jamming is used intentionally directing electromagnetic energy towards a communication to disrupt a signal transmission. Jamming interfere with the radio frequency of the sensor part. Countermeasures against jamming contain transmitted power, frequency spectrum, direct sequence spread spectrum, antenna polarization, directional transmission, etc.

Wormhole

In this type of Attacks, an adversary Tunnels message received in one part of the network and a low latency link replays in different part. An adversary situated near to the base station so it completely disrupt routing by creating a wormhole.

They are dangerous because they can damage without even knowing the services in the network and it is hard to detect in the system. For Detecting Wormholes the software used is IDS (Intrusion Detection System). This Software Check every node of the sensor network if it found a malicious node then alarm message is broadcasted.

Eavesdropping

The Data traffic on the communication channels and the transmissions is captured by eavesdropping, so that sensitive data can extracted and analyse with the collected data. The Attackers also catch sensitive data by plugging into the wireless channel. The security depends on the power of antenna and so rarely detectable. Cryptography and access restriction techniques such as hibernating use of directional antenna can, reduce the occurrence of attack in Physical Layer.

Sinkhole Attack

In this Type of Attack, First of all it makes a compromised node look especially attractive to surrounding nodes with respect to the Routing Algorithm. These attacks are difficult to counter because routing information supplied by a node is difficult to verify. Example, A laptop-class adversary has a strong power radio transmitter that provides a high quality route by transmitting with power to reach at wide area network.

Hacking Methods

So, it is also important to know some of the hacking techniques that are commonly used to get your personal information in an unauthorized way.

There are some method as follow:

• Bait and switch
• Cookie Theft
• Click Jacking Attacks
• Virus, Trojan etc.
• Phishing
• Eavesdropping (Passive Attack)
• Fake WAP
• Waterhole attacks
• Denial of Service (DoSDDoS)
• Key logger.

Man in the Middle Attack

It is type of cyber-attack where a malicious actor inserts him into a conversation between two parties, try to access the information that two v parties were trying to send to each other. In this attack, it allow him to intercept in the conversation, send and receive data meant for someone else, without either outside party knowing until it is too late.

Man in the middle is a type of eavesdropping attack that occurs when a malicious actor inserts himself as proxy into communication session between systems. It also exploit the real time processing of transaction or transfer of data. It all happening without either of the party knowing anything.

Brute Force Attack

It is a trial and error Method used by application programs to decode encrypted data such data encryption standard keys (DES) through exhaustive effort rather than employing intellectual strategies. It proceeds through all combination of the different method and try to get information about wireless network and password for entering into the wireless network.

Phishing Method

Phishing is the method that you are familiar with. You create a Fake Account and ID in yahoo and fool your friends by telling them to send the victim's ID, their own ID and their own Password in your Fake Yahoo Account.

Fake Login Hack

Fake Login Hack is the Hacking used by most of you for your goal by creating a Fake Login Page and telling your friends to login there and the Password would come to you.

Conclusion

In this paper, a survey is given on existing attacks in wireless networks. We have also covered the countermeasures and potential solutions against those attacks, and mentioned some open research issues. This paper helps the reader to have better view of attacks and countermeasures in networks, and find their way to start secure designs for these networks. And also Hacking is now an issue that does not have any conclusion. The only way we can stop a hacker is by learning hacking. By learning we can read the minds of a hacker which enables us to know the reality. Hacking is not a crime but it is made a crime by misusing the knowledge of programming. Every hacker is a perfect programmer even more than a normal programmer. Everyone should know the ethics of hacking and follow them to be safer.

Future Work

The future looks brighter for wireless security. The original 802. 11 security mechanisms enabled wireless networking to become a multibillion dollar-a-year industry. However, as attackers have matured, we’ve come to rely on networks, and we’ve discovered flaws in the core wireless security protocols. 802. 11i is an attempt to turn wireless networking into a trusted medium for users of all types: TKIP provides enhanced security for existing infrastructure, CCMP is a fresh start for data integrity and confidentiality on the network, and 802. 1x is a fully extensible and robust authentication mechanism that allows infrastructures to authenticate users, not just wireless hosts. If you cannot wait for the 802. 11i standard to be finalized, the Wi-Fi Alliance is already out of the gate with WPA. If you decide to adopt WPA now, be aware that it will likely change once 802. 11i is ratified.