Secure Rateless Deluge: Pollution-Resistant Reprogramming and Data Dissemination for Wireless Sensor Networks

A network reprogramming protocol is made for updating the firmware of a wireless sensor network (WSN) in situ. For security reasons, every firmware update must be authenticated to prevent an attacker from installing its code in the network. While existing schemes can provide authentication services, they are insufficient for a new generation of network coding-based reprogramming protocols like Rateless Deluge. We propose Secure Rateless Deluge or Sreluge, a secure version of Rateless Deluge that is resistant to pollution attacks (denial-of-service attacks aimed at polluting encoded packets). Sreluge employs a neighbor classification system and a time series forecasting technique to isolate polluters, and a combinatorial technique to decode data packets in the presence of polluters before the isolation is complete. For detecting polluters, Sreluge has zero false negative rate and a negligible false positive rate. TOSSIM simulations and experimental results show that Sreluge is practical.