Tradeoffs in Configuring Secure Data Dissemination in Sensor Networks: An Empirical Outlook

Network-reprogramming is a valuable service for maintaining sensor networks. Network-reprogramming services need to be not only efficient and reliable, but secure as well. A number of strategies for providing authentication and integrity have been proposed and evaluated, but the tradeoff space has yet to be explored to any significant depth. The recently proposed strategies are mainly distinguished through their structure, granularity and strength of hashing. We propose a configurable, secure data dissemination scheme that uses a different hash-structure to allow for a high degree of flexibility in choosing from a full spectrum of hash granularities and strengths. Using this structure, we are able to experimentally explore the tradeoffs inherent in choosing a hash-granularity under different attack scenarios and densities.