Biblio

Tamper detection circuits provide the first and most important defensive wall in protecting electronic modules containing security data. A widely used procedure is to cover the entire module with a foil containing fine conductive mesh, which detects intrusion attempts. Detection circuits are further classified as passive or active. Passive circuits have the advantage of low power consumption, however they are unable to detect small variations in the conductive mesh parameters. Since modern tools provide an upper leverage over the passive method, the most efficient way to protect security modules is thus to use active circuits. The active tamper detection circuits are typically probing the conductive mesh with short pulses, analyzing its response in terms of delay and shape. The method proposed in this paper generates short pulses at one end of the mesh and analyzes the response at the other end. Apart from measuring pulse delay, the analysis includes a frequency domain characterization of the system, determining whether there has been an intrusion or not, by comparing it to a reference (un-tampered with) spectrum. The novelty of this design is the combined analysis, in time and frequency domains, of the small variations in mesh characteristic parameters.

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are implemented in various Internet-of-Things applications such as energy management systems. As the applications may involve personal information, they must be protected from attackers attempting to read information or control network devices. Research on WSN security is essential to protect WSNs from attacks. Studies in such research domains propose solutions against the attacks. However, they focus mainly on the security measures rather than on their ease in implementation in WSNs. In this paper, we propose a coordination middleware that provides an environment for constructing updatable WSNs for security. The middleware is based on LINC, a rule-based coordination middleware. The proposed approach allows the development of WSNs and attaches or detaches security modules when required. We implemented three security modules on LINC and on a real network, as case studies. Moreover, we evaluated the implementation costs while comparing the case studies.