FEATURES
Fast Simulation Speed
Early, fast and accurate simulations can provide information to the WSN developers that enable the modification of the SW algorithms or the network architecture in order to optimize the WSN design for the best use of the limited resources
Attacks Simulation
The objective of the framework is to enable the simulation of WSNs in order to analyze the effects of different attacks on the system. The simulator allows designers to evaluate the network/node behavior in an easy-to-use loop where different design alternatives can be evaluated in the first steps of the design process.
Encryption Security Metric
In order to detect potential vulnerabilities in wireless transmissions, it is important to measure the security of the encrypted packets
Real Network Traffic
In order to estimate the attack effects, it is important to work with the real traffic that the network will have when it is deployed
Simulation of the Real SW Code
To calculate the behavior of the SW code against attacks, it is very important to simulate the WSN using the final SW code of each node.
HW platform support
The power consumption will vary depending on the Hardware components of the platform. The simulator must support different architectures
OS support
Nowadays, the software of an embedded system can run over an operating system. It is of great value for the simulator to support different and typical OSs.
Power consumption estimation
The estimation of power consumption is one of the main requirements to estimate the attack effects.
About Security
The increasing complexity and low-power constraints of current Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) require efficient methodologies for network simulation and embedded software performance analysis of nodes. In addition, security is also a very important feature that has to be addressed in most WSNs, since they may work with sensitive data and operate in hostile unattended environments. In this paper, a methodology for security analysis of Wireless Sensor Networks is presented. The methodology allows designing attack-aware embedded software/firmware or attack countermeasures to provide security in WSNs. The proposed methodology includes attacker modeling and attack simulation with performance analysis (node’s software execution time and power consumption estimation). After an analysis of different WSN attack types, an attacker model is proposed. This model defines three different types of attackers that can emulate most WSN attacks. In addition, this paper presents a virtual platform that is able to model the node hardware, embedded software and basic wireless channel features. This virtual simulation analyzes the embedded software behavior and node power consumption while it takes into account the network deployment and topology. Additionally, this simulator integrates the previously mentioned attacker model. Thus, the impact of attacks on power consumption and software behavior/execution-time can be analyzed. This provides developers with essential information about the effects that one or multiple attacks could have on the network, helping them to develop more secure WSN systems. This WSN attack simulator is an essential element of the attack-aware embedded software development methodology that is also introduced in this work.