@incollection {ruben2014a, title = {Location Privacy in WSNs: Solutions, Challenges, and Future Trends}, booktitle = {Foundations of Security Analysis and Design VII}, volume = {8604}, number = {LNCS}, year = {2014}, pages = {244-282}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, abstract = {

Privacy preservation is gaining popularity in Wireless Sensor Network (WSNs) due to its adoption in everyday scenarios. There are a number of research papers in this area many of which concentrate on the location privacy problem. In this paper we review and categorise these solutions based on the information available to the adversary and his capabilities. But first we analyse whether traditional anonymous communication systems conform to the original requirements of location privacy in sensor networks. Finally, we present and discuss a number of challenges and future trends that demand further attention from the research community.

}, keywords = {Location Privacy, survey, traffic analysis, wireless sensor networks}, isbn = {978-3-319-10081-4}, issn = {0302-9743}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-10082-1_9}, author = {Ruben Rios and Javier Lopez and Jorge Cuellar} } @inproceedings {Lopez2014prl, title = {Preserving Receiver-Location Privacy in Wireless Sensor Networks}, booktitle = {Information Security Practice and Experience (ISPEC 2014)}, volume = {8434}, year = {2014}, month = {05/2014}, pages = {15-27}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, address = {Fuzhou, China}, abstract = {

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are exposed to many different types of attacks. Among these, the most devastating attack is to compromise or destroy the base station since all communications are addressed exclusively to it. Moreover, this feature can be exploited by a passive adversary to determine the location of this critical device. This receiver-location privacy problem can be reduced by hindering traffic analysis but the adversary may still obtain location information by capturing a subset of sensor nodes in the field. This paper addresses, for the first time, these two problems together in a single solution

}, keywords = {Location Privacy, node capture, traffic analysis, wireless sensor networks}, isbn = {978-3-319-06319-5}, issn = {0302-9743}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-06320-1_3}, url = {http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-06320-1_3$\#$}, author = {Javier Lopez and Ruben Rios and Jorge Cuellar} } @article {Rios2012a, title = {(Un)Suitability of Anonymous Communication Systems to WSN}, journal = {IEEE Systems Journal}, volume = {7}, number = {2}, year = {2013}, month = {Jun 2013}, pages = {298 - 310}, publisher = {IEEE Systems Council}, abstract = {

Anonymous communication systems have been extensively studied by the research community to prevent the disclosure of sensitive information from the analysis of individuals{\textquoteright} traffic patterns. Many remarkable solutions have been developed in this area, most of which have proven to be effective in the protection of user privacy against different types of attacks. Recently, the privacy preservation problem has also been considered in the realm of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) due to their imminent adoption in real-world scenarios. A special challenge that arises from the analysis of the flow of sensor nodes{\textquoteright} communications is the location privacy problem. In this work we concentrate on analyzing the suitability of traditional anonymous communication systems originally designed for the Internet to the original scenario of sensor networks. The results show that, in most cases, traditional solutions do not provide the adequate protection means for the particular problem of location privacy, while other solutions are too resource-consuming for the restricted capabilities of sensor nodes.

}, keywords = {Anonymous communication, Location Privacy, wireless sensor networks}, issn = {1932-8184}, doi = {10.1109/JSYST.2012.2221956}, author = {Ruben Rios and Javier Lopez} } @article {Rios2011b, title = {Exploiting Context-Awareness to Enhance Source-Location Privacy in Wireless Sensor Networks}, journal = {The Computer Journal}, volume = {54}, year = {2011}, month = {Sept 2011}, pages = {1603-1615}, publisher = {Oxford University Press}, abstract = {

The source-location privacy problem in Wireless Sensor Networks has been traditionally tackled by the creation of random routes for every packet transmitted from the source nodes to the base station. These schemes provide a considerable protection level at a high cost in terms of message delivery time and energy consumption. This overhead is due to the fact that the data routing process is done in a blind way, without knowledge about the location of the attacker. In this work we propose the Context-Aware Location Privacy (CALP) approach, which takes advantage of the ability of sensor nodes to perceive the presence of a mobile adversary in their vicinity in order to transmit data packets in a more energy-efficient and privacy-preserving manner. In particular, we apply the concepts of CALP to the development of a shortest-path CALP routing algorithm. A permissive and a strict version of the protocol are studied for different adversarial models and the proposed schemes are evaluated through simulation experiments in terms of privacy protection and energy consumption. Finally, we present the conclusions of the paper as well as possible extensions of this work.

}, keywords = {Context-Awareness, Location Privacy, wireless sensor networks}, issn = {0010-4620}, doi = {10.1093/comjnl/bxr055}, author = {Ruben Rios and Javier Lopez} }