A Trust Based Mechanism for Preventing Noncooperative Eaves Dropping in WSN

The eaves dropping attack is a serious security threat to a wirelesses or network (WSN) since the eaves dropping attack is a prerequisite for other attacks. The traditional security solution based on cryptography and authentication is not sufficient for wireless sensor networks, which encounters new challenges from internal attackers, and trust is recognized as a novel approach to defend against such attacks. In this paper, we propose a trust-based LEACH (low energy adaptive clustering hierarchy) protocol for clustering to provide secure routing, while preserving the essential functionalities of the original protocol. Within the cluster, a measurable indirect trust of a CM (Cluster Member) is evaluated by its CH (Cluster Head). Thus each CM does not need to maintain the feedback from other CMs, which will reduce the communication overhead and eliminate the possibility of a Eaves Dropping attack by compromised CMs. A source and sink network is considered, and the intra cluster communication between the source and the sink is subject to non cooperative eavesdropping on each link. Without compromising any nodes an attacker can interrupt the network system. The proposed trust management detects the malicious behavior of the eavesdropped nodes. It is based on four trust components intimacy, honesty, energy, unselfishness of the nodes.