Technical Report SRI-SDL-04-02
System Design Laboratory
SRI International
April 2004

We present a novel approach for key management in wireless sensor networks. Using initial trust built from a small set of shared keys, low-cost protocols enable neighboring sensors to authenticate and establish secure local links. As the risk of sensor compromise increases with time, the keys are used only for a limited period right after deployment. Once secure local links are established, other security services such as group-key refresh can be provided. The protocols we present require little memory and processing power, and require a small number of shared keys independent of the network size. Moreover, these protocols do not depend on a trusted server or base station. To validate the applicability of our approach to ad hoc wireless sensor networks, we have implemented our protocols on the TinyOSbased Mica platform and applied them to secure a perimeter monitoring application.

@TechReport{Dutertre:2004:KeyMgt,
  author =       "Bruno Dutertre and Steven Cheung and Joshua Levy",
  title =        "Lightweight Key Management in Wireless Sensor Networks
                  by Leveraging Initial Trust",
  institution =  {System Design Laboratory, SRI International},
  number =       "SRI-SDL-04-02",
  month =        apr,
  year =         {2004}
}

• SRI-SDL-04-02.pdf