Open AccessHuman interactive secure key and identity exchange protocols in body sensor networks
Author(s) -
Huang Xin,
Chen Bangdao,
Markham Andrew,
Wang Qinghua,
Yan Zheng,
Roscoe Andrew William
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
iet information security
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.308
H-Index - 34
eISSN - 1751-8717
pISSN - 1751-8709
DOI - 10.1049/iet-ifs.2012.0080
Subject(s) - computer science , computer security , wireless sensor network , computer network , protocol (science) , key exchange , hash function , cryptographic protocol , public key cryptography , cryptography , encryption , medicine , alternative medicine , pathology
A body sensor network (BSN) is typically a wearable wireless sensor network. Security protection is critical to BSNs, since they collect sensitive personal information. Generally speaking, security protection of BSN relies on identity (ID) and key distribution protocols. Most existing protocols are designed to run in general wireless sensor networks, and are not suitable for BSNs. After carefully examining the characteristics of BSNs, the authors propose human interactive empirical channel‐based security protocols, which include an elliptic curve Diffie–Hellman version of symmetric hash commitment before knowledge protocol and an elliptic curve Diffie–Hellman version of hash commitment before knowledge protocol. Using these protocols, dynamically distributing keys and IDs become possible. As opposite to present solutions, these protocols do not need any pre‐deployment of keys or secrets. Therefore compromised and expired keys or IDs can be easily changed. These protocols exploit human users as temporary trusted third parties. The authors, thus, show that the human interactive channels can help them to design secure BSNs.