Title: Security in Wireless Sensor Networks



Abstract: 
Securing a wireless sensor network (WSN) poses a major challenge. Sensors and
WSNs are inherently vulnerable to a multitude of threats, including physical
tampering, spoofing, denial of service, and impersonation (among many others).
Typically, wireless sensors are tiny, commodity devices with limited energy,
computing and communication capabilities.  As a result, WSNs are inherently
multi-hop, ad-hoc networks that suffer from intermittent connectivity. The
collaboration required by groups of sensors to accomplish their mission, the
often unattended operation of WSNs – especially in hostile environment, and
the voluminous amount of, often sensitive, data collected by WSNs further
exacerbate concerns about secure WSN operations. The security problem is
particularly difficult if the network is very large consisting of
tens-of-thousands of sensor nodes scattered over a large area. Although
state-of-the-art security solutions for WSNs are appropriate for networks of
limited size, they are not applicable to large-scale WSNs.  This talk discusses
some of the security problem in WSNs, presents attacker and threat models, and
discusses attack types, attacks, and countermeasures. The talk also presents a
novel clustered key management scheme for WSNs that is scalable and
energy-efficient.  We provide efficient methods of recovery from situations of
multiple node compromises, while maintaining low communication and
computational overhead. 


Bio:
Mohamed Eltoweissy is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the 
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). 
Dr. Eltoweissy holds BS and MS degrees in Computer Science and Automatic 
Control from Alexandria  University (Egypt) in 1986 and 1989 respectively, 
and a Ph.D. from Old Dominion University (USA) in 1993. 
 
He is the author of over 70 refereed technical publications and has an
established funding record in excess of $10 million. Prior to joining Virginia
Tech, Dr. Eltoweissy was an Associate Professor of Computer Science at James
Madison University (JMU).  In 2001, he founded the multi-university,
multi-disciplinary Commonwealth Information Security Center (CISC) in Virginia
as a an information security research and technology transfer center. His
research interests include wireless ad hoc and sensor networks, information
assurance and security, and computer supported cooperative work.

Dr. Eltoweissy served as guest-editor for the Elsevier Journal of Computer
Communications and the IOS Journal of Computer Security. He also organized and
served as chair, co-chair, and technical program committee member on numerous
conferences and workshops. in 2003, Dr. Eltoweissy was nominated for the
State-wide Outstanding Faculty Awards, the highest honor for faculty in
Virginia.