Privacy-Preserving Querying in Sensor Networks (0905.2158v1)

Abstract: Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) provide sensing and monitoring services by means of many tiny autonomous devices equipped with wireless radio transceivers. As WSNs are deployed on a large-scale and/or on long-term basis, not only traditional security but also privacy issues must be taken into account. Furthermore, when network operators offer on-demand access to sensor measurements to their clients, query mechanisms should ideally leak neither client interests nor query patterns. In this paper, we present a privacy-preserving WSN query mechanism that uses standard cryptographic techniques. Besides preventing unauthorized entities from accessing sensor readings, it minimizes leakage of (potentially sensitive) information about users' query targets and patterns.