Learn to Trust Thy Neighbor: Proactive Trust Management System (PTMS) for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are systems that may contain hundreds to thousands of low-power and low-cost sensor nodes. The potential applicability of such systems is enormous and includes environment monitoring, security surveillance and intrusion detection, monitoring chemical plants for safety, wireless body area networks, among others. As WSN technology matures, an increasing number of such systems will be deployed in real world, hostile environments. As a result, WSNs will be the subject of a wide variety of possible attacks. While the different basic cryptographic building blocks and hardened hardware architectures currently available for most WSN platforms allow protection on a single node basis, once a node has been compromised, such building blocks are not efficient in preventing wider scale attacks. To that end, UtopiaCompression (UC), in conjunction with its consultants Lockheed Martin and Prof. Mario Gerla, proposes a reputation-based solution: Proactive Trust Management System (PTMS) for WSNs. Our innovative solution is specifically designed to address resource constrained WSNs and is based on temporal and spatial outlier detection mechanisms as well as on a Dempster Shafer theory based reputation system. During Phase I, UC will produce a simulated prototype of our system and validate its performance through comparison with alternative approaches.