MimiBS: Mimicking Base-Station to Provide Location Privacy Protection in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In a wireless sensor network (WSN), sink node/base station (BS) gathers data from surrounding nodes and sends them to a remote server via a gateway. BS holds important data. Therefore, it is necessary to hide its location from an inside/outside attacker. Providing BS location anonymity against a local and global adversary, we propose a novel technique called MimiBS “Mimicking Base-Station”. The key idea is the integration of aggregator nodes (ANs) with sensor nodes (SNs), while fine tuning TTL (time to live) value for fake packets, and setting some threshold value for real packet counter rpctr. MimiBS creates multiple traffic-hotspots (zones), which shifts the focus from BS to the newly created ANs hotspots. Multiple traffic-hotspots confuse the adversary while determining the real BS location information. We defend the BS location information anonymity against traffic analysis attack, and traffic tracing attack. MimiBS gives an illusion of having multiple BSs, and thus, if the attacker knows any about AN, he/she will be deceived between the real BS and ANs. MimiBS outperforms BLAST (base-station location anonymity and security technique), RW (random walk), and SP (shortest path), while conducting routing without fake packets, with fake packets, without energy consideration, and with energy consideration respectively.