An Efficient and Lightweight Source Privacy Protecting Scheme for Sensor Networks Using Group Knowledge

Providing source privacy is a critical security service for sensor networks. However, privacy preserving in sensor networks is a challenging task, particularly due to the limited resources of sensor nodes and the threat of node capture attack. On the other hand, existing works use either random walk path or fake packets injection, both incurring tremendous overhead. In this work, we propose a new approach, which separates the sensor nodes into groups. The source packet is randomly forwarded within and between the groups with elaborate design to ensure communication anonymity; furthermore, members of each group exchange encrypted traffic of constant packet length to make it difficult for the adversary to trace back. One salient feature of the proposed scheme is its flexibility of trading transmission for higher anonymity requirement. We analyze the ability of our proposed scheme to withstand different attacks and demonstrate its efficiency in terms of overhead and functionality when compared to existing works. © 2013 Zhiqiang Ruan et al.