Abstract:
As the use of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are rapidly becoming a fundamental part
of the global infrastructure, effective and reliable authentication schemes are now essential.
For WSNs this problem is difficult, since a typical system is comprised of devices that are
resource constrained. The purpose of this thesis is to study the design of a lightweight experimental
authentication scheme based, on the Host Identity Protocol (HIP). In particular,
we propose the DrHIP (DoS Resilient Host Identity Protocol) protocol, which is designed
to support WSN group key management while offering resistance to Denial of Service attacks.
The DrHIP protocol utilizes the puzzle mechanism of the Host Identity Protocol in
mitigating the impact of an attacker launching spurious authentication requests. We have
implemented DrHIP in a working testbed of Z1 motes using the Contiki system, and have
experimentally shown that DrHIP can offer high levels of goodput even in the event of DoS
attacks against the authentication system.
