ABSTRACT
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are crucial in collecting and transmitting data from hostile and inhospitable locations. Furthermore, WSNs have proved effective in their use in military, health care, environmental monitoring, and agricultural applications. However, WSN technology faces several challenges due to the limitations and restrictions in the resources utilized toward its creation and implementation. The requirement to keep costs at a minimum, coupled with the use of radio signals to share information, places WSNs and its users at increased risks from malicious attackers. Nevertheless, utilizing strong encryption, increasing battery life, and using sophisticated software in sensitive WSNs can contribute toward improving individual networks’ defense mechanisms. In this chapter, we propose to utilize our recently reported three-phase symmetric cipher algorithm in WSNs. The messages transmitted in WSNs are usually short. Shorter messages are more vulnerable to cryptanalysis and brute-force attacks. Our proposed cipher algorithm is capable of generating larger ciphertext lengths in comparison with plaintext. This variation in length obscures the statistical association between the plaintext and ciphertext, consequently making the cryptanalysis procedure challenging. Additionally, the cipher algorithm is designed to make the processing time of converting the plaintext to ciphertext shorter; therefore, it increases the WSNs’ battery lifetime.
