Secure Middleware: Services for Wireless Sensor Networks
Wireless sensor networks are increasingly being used as a cost-effective, viable means to design remote monitoring applications such as environment surveillance (e.g., acoustic, seismic, video), home/office security, medical monitoring (e.g., ECG, blood pressure), and even wildlife migration monitoring. In accomplishing their tasks these applications have to overcome challenges posed by wireless sensor networks, viz. limited battery life, limited computation power, and short-range, unreliable wireless communication. To assist applications in effectively utilizing sensor networks, middleware services are being developed that provide services such as data aggregation, compound event detection, power management, sensor failure tolerance, and remote software updates. However, little or no work has been done in integrating security functions with middleware services, without which, deployed sensor networks would become vulnerable to unauthorized eavesdropping, modification, and service disruption. Furthermore, this integration would allow for changes in sensor technology, either types or advancements, without having to change the application logic.
 
Project Leads
Himanshu Khurana, NCSA
Jim Basney, NCSA

Return to Projects list


The National Center for Advanced Secure Systems Research NCASSR) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) is a multi-institutional cybersecurity research team. NCASSR focuses basic and applied research necessary to develop next generation information security technologies that address national cybersecurity needs. NCASSR is led by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and supported by funding from the Office of Naval Research (ONR).


SELS 0.7 released
Secure Email List Services (SELS) is an open source software for creating and developing secure email list services among user communities.
 
Strong community engagement strengthens cybersecurity research and development
NCASSR-supported exploratory research at NCSA and elsewhere has sparked additional external funding and development opportunities as well as successful deployment and adoption by users ranging from the defense sector to state law enforcement to the utilities industry.
 
NCASSR Collaborator Goes To Washington
Carl Gunter, a professor in the University of Illinois Department of Computer Science and a project lead on NCASSR-supported work involving adaptive, secure messaging, recently spoke to an audience of congressional staffers and lobbyists on Capitol Hill regarding ways to address a variety of critical cybersecurity issues in areas such as healthcare and energy distribution.