As sensor networks edge closer towards wide-spread deployment,
security issues become a central concern. So far, the main research
focus has been on making sensor networks feasible and useful, and
less emphasis was placed on security.
We design a suite of security building blocks that are optimized
for resource-constrained environments and wireless communica-
tion. SPINS has two secure building blocks: SNEP and
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TESLA.
SNEP provides the following important baseline security primi-
tives: Data con?dentiality, two-party data authentication, and data
freshness. A particularly hard problem is to provide ef?cient broad-
cast authentication, which is an important mechanism for sensor
networks.
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TESLA is a new protocol which provides authenticated
broadcast for severely resource-constrained environments.
We implemented the above protocols, and show that they are practical
even on minimalistic hardware: The performance of the protocol
suite easily matches the data rate of our network. Additionally, we
demonstrate that the suite can be used for building higher level protocols.