Notes on "An Effective ECC based User Access Control Scheme with Attribute based Encryption for WSN"

TL;DR

This paper critically analyzes an existing attribute-based authentication scheme for wireless sensor networks, revealing security vulnerabilities and protocol inconsistencies that compromise data integrity and access control.

Contribution

The paper provides a detailed security analysis of Santanu et al's scheme, identifying specific vulnerabilities and protocol flaws that were previously overlooked.

Findings

Scheme is vulnerable to insider and node capture attacks

Identifies protocol inconsistencies that hinder execution

Highlights the need for more secure authentication in WSNs

Abstract

The rapid growth of networking and communication technologies results in amalgamation of 'Internet of Things' and 'Wireless sensor networks' to form WSNIT. WSNIT facilitates the WSN to connect dynamically to Internet and exchange the data with the external world. The critical data stored in sensor nodes related to patient health, environment can be accessed by attackers via insecure internet. To counterattack this, there is a demand for data integrity and controlled data access by incorporating a highly secure and light weight authentication schemes. In this context, Santanu et al had proposed an attribute based authentication framework for WSN and discussed on its security strengths. In this paper, we do a thorough analysis on Santanu et al scheme, to show that their scheme is susceptible to privileged insider attack and node capture attack. We also demonstrate that Santanu et al scheme consists of major inconsistencies which restrict the protocol execution.