J Supercomput

DOI 10.1007/s11227-013-0965-0

Enhancing the attacking efficiency of the node capture

attack in WSN: a matrix approach

Chi Lin · Guowei Wu

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Abstract In the node capture attack, the adversary intelligently captures nodes and
extracts the cryptographic keys from their memories to destroy the security, reliabil-
ity and confidentiality of the wireless sensor networks. However, it suffers from low
attacking efficiency and high resource expenditure. In this paper, we approach this
attack from an adversarial view and develop a matrix-based method to model the pro-
cess of the node capture attack. We establish a matrix to indicate the compromising
relationship between the nodes and the paths. We propose a Matrix-based node cap-
ture attack Algorithm (MA in short), which can maximize the destructiveness while
consuming the minimum resource expenditure. We conduct several experiments to
show the performance of MA. Experimental results manifest that MA can reduce
the attacking round, shorten the execution time, enhance the attacking efficiency and
conserve the energy cost.

Keywords Node capture attack · Wireless sensor networks · Attacking efficiency ·

Energy cost

1 Introduction

Wireless sensor networks [1] (WSNs) can be flexibly and quickly deployed for many
applications such as the disastrous and military monitoring. In the WSNs, the secu-
rity [2, 3] of the network plays an important role in preserving confidentiality and
integrity of the wireless links. However, these two properties can be eliminated by

C. Lin · G. Wu ()
School of Software Technology, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China
e-mail: wgwdut@dlut.edu.cn
C. Lin
e-mail: chilin@mail.dlut.edu.cn
 C. Lin, G. Wu

physically capturing nodes and extracting the cryptographic keys from their memo-
ries. This kind of attack is called the node capture attack [4–8] in which an adver-
sary can capture a sensor node to get access to the cryptographic keys of the applied
link layer security mechanism. By recovering the cryptographic keys from the node
memories, the adversary can eavesdrop on the message exchange process. This kind
of attack largely threatens the security, reliability and confidentiality of the network
[5]. Moreover, it will lead to an effective wire-tapping attack, which compromises the
security of a single-hop wireless link.
Researching the mechanism of the attack is of profound significance in guaran-
teeing the network security in wireless sensor networks. This is because analyzing
the way of mounting an attack to destroy the safety of the network can provide fun-
damental knowledge for developing the counter-measures in resisting the malicious
attack [9]. Recently, researchers are paying close attention to studying various attacks
in the wireless sensor network. For example, the Sybil attack [10–12], the jamming
attack [13, 14], the DoS attack [15], the sinkhole attack [16], the replication attack
[17–19] and so on.
To model the effect of the node capture attack, several publications have been pro-
posed to elaborate on the influence of such an attack, especially when the network is
configured with the random key pre-distribution scheme [20], which was originally
proposed by Eschenauer and Gligor [21]. Theoretically, approaches of modeling the
node capture attack can be categorized into five types: UML methods [22, 23], prob-
ability analysis [24, 25], system theoretic approach [26], epidemic theory [26–28],
and vulnerability analysis [29–32].
However, the aforementioned methods [22–32] only care about the attacker ran-
domly selecting a node to mount an attack. In [4], the authors point out that the adver-
sary can compromise a node intelligently to improve the efficiency of the node cap-
ture attack with publicly available information, which is learned through eavesdrop-
ping on insecure message exchange throughout the network. Hence, when evaluating
the effect of the node capture attack, the factor of the decision making of the attacker
must be taken into consideration. In [33–35], the authors propose a method to formal-
ize the vulnerability of the network by using circuit theoretic analysis. They devise
a Greedy Node capture Approximation using Vulnerability Evaluation (GNAVE) to
approximate the minimum cost. Examples of node capture attacks are provided based
on the vulnerability metric. However, methods in [33–35] still suffer from some lim-
itations:
• The vulnerability is characterized as a real number, which cannot precisely de-
scribe the destructiveness of capturing nodes in the node capture attack.
• The attacking efficiency (i.e. the fraction of the compromised traffic by capturing
the same number of nodes) is low, which requires capturing a large number of
nodes to compromise the network.
• The node capture attack is only taken from the perspective of the relationships
between nodes and routes. This leads to a long execution time.
Analyzing the efficiency of the attack is of great contribution in developing the
vulnerability evaluation approaches. This is because the attacker prefers capturing
the node that leads to the maximum destructiveness while consuming the minimum
Enhancing the attacking efficiency of the node capture attack

energy. In other words, the attacker aims at destroying the most vulnerable point of
the network. Therefore, designing an effective node compromise attack can provide
a novel view of modeling the vulnerability of the network.
Motivated by developing an efficient node capture attack algorithm, proposing
a new way of evaluating the vulnerability of the network defense mechanism and
overcoming the limitations above, in this paper, we focus on designing a Matrix-
based node capture attack Algorithm (MA) on random key pre-distribution [20] in
wireless sensor networks. The contributions can be summarized as follows:
• We transform the node capture attack into a matrix attack in which the attacker only
needs to maintain a particular matrix rather than the topology of the networks.
• We provide a novel node capture attack algorithm that enhances the efficiency
while reducing the energy cost. To the best knowledge of the authors, this is the
first time to model the node capture attack based on a matrix approach. Our method
provides a new way of evaluating the destructiveness of the attack and estimating
the vulnerability of the network.
• We conduct several experiments to compare our scheme with other node capture
attack algorithms in terms of attacking rounds, execution time, the fraction of the
compromised traffic and the energy cost.
This paper is organized as follows: Sect. 2 gives a literature review of the node cap-
ture attack. Section 3 introduces relevant preliminaries in this paper. Section 4 illus-
trates the matrix attack algorithm. We propose an example to illustrate our node cap-
ture attack in Sect. 5. Simulations and experimental results are presented in Sect. 6.
We conclude our paper in Sect. 7.

2 Related works

In literature, the approaches of modeling the node capture attack can be categorized
into the following types: UML methods [22, 23], probability analysis [24, 25], system
theoretic approach [26], epidemic theory [26–28], and vulnerability analysis [29–32].
UML methods [22, 23] model the behaviors of the attacker and use the UML
language to manifest the steps in mounting an attack. However, this type of method
can only formalize the behavior of the attack from an intuitive way, which cannot
manifest the influence or the characteristic of the node capture attack.
Probability analysis [24, 25] methods calculate the characteristic parameters of
the network by utilizing probabilistic model. In [25], the authors propose a proba-
bilistic model for the process of gathering information by an adversary to capture
a node. They calculate the expected time of a node capture based on the strength
of an adversary and the dynamicity of the network. However, it is difficult to deter-
mine how much information is gathered by the attacker. In [24], Chan et al. study
the overall network connectivity and the relationship to key pre-distribution schemes
and node compromise attacks. They also derive an expression that determines the
required communication radius for wireless sensor networks. Nevertheless, refs. [24,
25] suffer from some limitations when analyzing an attack; searching the features in
topology only is not enough, because the adversary needs to consider the attacking
efficiency and the resource expenditure in mounting an attack.
 C. Lin, G. Wu

Bonaci et al. [26] model the node capture attack from a system theoretic model
point view and consider expenditure cost. When establishing the model, the node
recovery issue is also taken into account. They provide a control theoretic framework
to model the physical node capture. They develop a network response strategy to
guarantee the network connectivity and stability under node capture attack. However,
in that model, the authors put emphasis on the behavior of the attacker, while the
consequences of the node capture attack are not fully considered.
To study the consequences and effects of the node capture attack, De et al. in [26–
28] formalize the spread process of the node compromise by using epidemic theory.
They study the epidemic propagation based on the effects of different sensor deploy-
ment strategies and provide analytical result in designing potential defense strategies
against the node compromised attack. However, the authors neglect to consider that
an attacker can capture multiple nodes in the network to compromise the network.
Therefore, modeling the node capture attack as a spread process is inappropriate.
Probability analysis, epidemic theory and system theoretic approach focus only
on the case that the attacker captures the node at random. The intelligence and inten-
tion of the attacker are ignored. While in the vulnerability evaluation approach, the
adversary is modeled with intelligence in which he can dynamically select the node
to capture by evaluating the vulnerability of the network, and the attacker can mount
multiple rounds of attacks in compromising the networks [29–32]. In [33], the authors
formalize a model for node capture attacks in which an adversary collects informa-
tion about the network via eavesdropping on the wireless medium and captures nodes
based on the learned information. They show that the goals of node capture attacks
can be decomposed into a collection of primitive events, the impact of which can be
evaluated and recombined to yield an overall evaluation of the attack. Moreover, the
authors demonstrate the use of the attack decomposition model for the derivation of
attack metrics and discuss the potential use of this decomposition technique for the
purposes of defense against node capture attacks. In [35], the authors investigate the
impact of node capture attacks on the confidentiality and integrity of network traffic.
They devise a method of evaluating the vulnerability of the network and formulate the
minimum node capture attack problem as a nonlinear integer programming problem.
Due to the NP-hardness of the minimization problem, they provide a greedy heuristic
that approximates the minimum cost attack named GNAVE. Although GNAVE can
enhance the attacking efficiency in terms of fewer compromised nodes and higher
fraction of the compromised traffic [35], it does not consider the execution time for
compromising the network.
To overcome the drawbacks of the aforementioned node capture attacks, we pro-
pose a new node capture attack algorithm that enhances the attacking efficiency while
reducing the energy cost.

3 Preliminaries

In this section, we propose the related background of our paper. Related symbols and
their definitions are listed in Table 1.
Enhancing the attacking efficiency of the node capture attack

Table 1 Symbols and notation

Symbols Notation

N The set of nodes in the network

ni The ith node
K The set of keys in the key pool
Ki The set of keys obtained by ni
l The set of links in the network
li,j The link between ni and nj
r The transmission range of nodes
Cn The set of compromised nodes
Kn The set of compromised keys
wi The resource expenditure (or the cost) of compromising ni
S The set of source nodes
D The set of destination nodes
rs,d A route with the source node s and the destination node d

3.1 Key assignment model

In the network, the random key pre-distribution scheme [20, 21] is applied. Each
sensor ni ∈ N is assigned a set of keys Ki ⊂ K that are randomly selected from a
key pool by applying random key pre-distribution
 protocol [20], K standing for the
set of keys in the key pool, K = ni ∈N Ki . A pair of nodes, ni and nj , are able
to communicate with each other if and only if they both locate within each other’s
transmission range r, and they share at least one common key Ki,j = Ki ∩ Kj = ∅.

3.2 Link model

In the network, the paths and routes consist of multiple links. A link li,j stands for a
reliable and secure link which is encrypted by Ki,j in which messages can be trans-
mitted without relaying to other nodes between ni and nj . The size of Ki,j (i.e.
the number of the shared keys between ni and nj ) directly relates to the safety of
the link. Larger size of the shared keys between the two ends of a link can pro-
vide higher level of security. We denote by l the set of all the links in the network,
l = {li,j |ni ∈ N, nj ∈ N }.

3.3 Network model

The network consists of a set of wireless sensor nodes N and the network topology
can be represented by a directed network graph G = (N, l). After all the nodes are
deployed, specific routing protocol will be implemented to establish multiple routes
to transmit packets from the source nodes to the destination nodes. To explore the
influence of the node capture attack on the network in different routing protocols, we
mainly analyze the effect of two kinds of routing protocols: the single path routing
protocol and the multiple paths routing protocol. The single path routing protocol
 C. Lin, G. Wu

establishes fixed path such as AODV [36], whereas multiple paths routing protocol
such as GBR [37] creates multiple paths for message transmission.

3.4 Adversary model

We approach the node capture attack from an adversarial view and consider that the
adversary has the ability and resources to eavesdrop on messages throughout the net-
work, to capture nodes, and extract cryptographic keys from the memory of the cap-
tured nodes in polynomial-time. We use the same assumptions as refs. [33–35], that
the adversary has the knowledge of the key assignment (i.e. the label of the key)
and the routing protocols including all the parameters of the network and protocol.
For example, a key can be expressed as label, key in our scenario, and the attacker
knows the assignment of the “labels” of the keys and the paths/routes constructed
by specific routing protocol. The reason is that, from the point view of the attacker,
we tend to propose an efficient attack to compromise the network through consum-
ing minimum energy cost while spending a short time. Therefore, we analyze the
condition that the attacker owns the background information of the key distribution
and network parameters, to develop the attacking algorithm. Similarly, from the point
view of the defender, it is feasible for him to get all possible background information
of the network. Therefore, in this work, the attacker is assumed to have the ability to
grasp the key assignment and the routing information of the network.
To compromise the network, the adversary needs to acquire a set of keys through
which he can destroy the confidentiality and safety of the network. To illustrate the
compromise of a link, path and route in a network, we introduce the following defi-
nitions:
We denote by Cn the set of the compromised nodes and by Ck the corresponding
set of keys obtained by the attacker.

Definition I A link li,j is compromised if and only if Ki,j ⊂ Ck .

A path contains a set of sequential links. The definition of the compromise of a

path is proposed as follows.

Definition II A path is compromised if and only if at least one link in the path is
compromised.

In the single path routing protocol, a path can be regarded as a route. Therefore,
the compromise of a path is equivalent to the compromise of a route. Whereas in the
multiple paths routing protocol, packets are partitioned into pieces and transmitted in
separate paths. To compromise such routes, we propose the following definition.

Definition III A route is compromised if and only if all the paths in the route are
compromised.

Since the destination nodes (e.g. the sink nodes) in the wireless sensor networks
are usually implemented with protection mechanism, we regard that they cannot be
Enhancing the attacking efficiency of the node capture attack

captured or intruded by the attacker. Therefore, we assume that the attacker cannot
capture the destination nodes, which is the same as in [33–35].
The objective of the attacker is to compromise all the routes in the network by
capturing a set of nodes with minimum resource expenditure. Therefore, such an
attack can be formalized as Algorithm 1.

Algorithm 1 Minimum Cost Node Capture Attack

1: Input: G(N, l), K, wi
⊆N
2: Find: Cn 
3: such that ni ∈Cn wi is minimized
4: and ∀s ∈ S, d ∈ D, rs,d is compromised

Originally, the network parameters such as the network graph G(N, l), the key
pre-distribution information K and the resource expenditure (i.e. the energy cost)
of compromising nodes wi are input to the algorithm. Lines 2–4 indicate that the
objective of the algorithm is to find a set of nodes by attacking which the least amount
of energy to compromise all the routes will be consumed. In line 4, rs,d is a route with
source s and destination d in the network.

4 Matrix attack algorithm (MA)

The essence of the node capture attack is to capture a set of nodes to compromise
the network. Exactly speaking, to compromise the network, we need to destroy the
safety of all the paths in the network. Therefore, all the paths in the network should be
compromised. Since compromising a path is directly related to obtaining one or a set
of keys by extracting the secret keys from one or a set of sensor nodes, we explicitly
analyze the relationship between the compromise of paths and the acquisition of keys
of the adversary.
Since each path is made up from a sequence of links, wrecking the security of
one link is sufficient to eavesdrop all the messages transmitted in the path that link
belongs to. Therefore, we mainly analyze the relationship between the paths and the
keys. We propose a path-key matrix that manifests whether obtaining a single key
can directly lead to the compromise of a path. We denote the path-key matrix as
PK = [pki,j ]P ×K , where:

1 If obtaining keyi can compromise pj
pki,j = (1)
0 Otherwise

P is the number of paths and K stands for the size of key pool; keyi stands for the
ith key in the key pool. To explain the relationship between compromise of nodes and
paths, we create another matrix named key-node matrix: KN = [kni,j ]K×N , which
manifests the belonging relationship between the keys and the nodes. KN can be
 C. Lin, G. Wu

computed as follows:

1 keyi ∈ Kj
kni,j = (2)
0 Otherwise
We tend to analyze how many paths will be compromised when a certain node is
compromised. Hence, we calculate the path-node matrix: PN = [pni,j ]P ×N as:

PN = PK × KN (3)

In the matrix PN, if the entry pni,j ≥ 1, it indicates that capturing nj can di-
rectly cause the compromise of the path pi . We call this kind of relationship “direct
compromise.” But considering only the direct compromise is not enough because
compromising a node can “partially compromise” a path. In that case, a link is se-
cured by more than one key. Obtaining parts of the keys only cannot fully destroy the
confidentiality of the messages. To elaborate on the partially compromise relation-
ship between nodes and the path, we propose another matrix, PLN = [p lni,j ]P ×N ,
to illustrate the ratio of keys obtained by the adversary in pi when nj is captured.
PLN can be calculated as Algorithm 2.

Algorithm 2 Constructing matrix PLN

1: Input: G(N, l), K
2: Output: PLN
3: for all pi ∈ P
4: for all nj ∈ N
5: if nj can partially compromise pi
 |Kj ∩Kt,t+1 |
6: p lni,j = 1e et=1 |K t,t+1 |
7: else
8: p lni,j = 0
9: end if
10: end for
11: end for
12: return PLN

Algorithm 2 proceeds as follows: originally, G(N, l) and K are inputted as the

parameters. Each node calculates the partial compromise relationship with every path
and records the sum as the entry in the matrix PLN. At last, the matrix PLN is returned
as the output of the algorithm. In the algorithm, e stands for the length of a link, P
is the set of all paths, N is the set of all nodes, Kt,t+1 means sharing keys of the tth
link, and the symbol “||” means the size of the set.
After obtaining the matrixes PN and PLN, we tend to merge the entries of PN and
PLN so as to establish a matrix for expressing the compromising relationship (i.e. the
direct compromise and partial compromise) between nodes and paths. We merge the
entries of these two matrixes into a matrix M = [mi,j ]P ×N as:

M = α × PN + (1 − α) × PLN (4)
Enhancing the attacking efficiency of the node capture attack

where α is a parameter selected from (0, 1): it indicates the importance between the
direct and the partial compromise. Bigger α expresses the higher influences of the
direct compromise. To illustrate the influence of different value of α in mounting a
node capture attack, we further analyze the importance of the parameter α by experi-
α
ment in Sect. 6.5. We mainly analyze the influence of the value 1−α on the attacking
rounds.
In the node capture attack, another issue the attacker should pay close attention
to is the energy cost. The attacker seeks for compromising a set of nodes that can
destroy the security of the network while consuming the least energy. Therefore, we
combine the energy cost of capturing nodes in the matrix MC = [mci,j ]P ×N as:
mi,j
mci,j = (5)
wj

where wj is the energy cost of compromising nj . The cost of capturing a node relates
to: (1) the environment that the node exposes, and (2) the capability of the adversary.
Therefore, it is difficult to elaborate on the resource expenditure cost in compromis-
ing a node. To demonstrate such a cost, we assume that the resource expenditure of
physically capturing a node is in the interval (0, 1).
When establishing the MC, there is another condition we should pay close at-
tention to. That is, if attacking a node cannot influence a path, how to express the
resource expenditure of such circumstances? In our method, we set the energy cost of
compromising such a node as δ, where δ is a constant that is bigger than the maximum
energy cost of compromising a node.
After we acquire MC, we devise a node capture attack that enhances the attacking
efficiency while reducing the energy cost. The procedure is illustrated in Algorithm 3.

Algorithm 3 The Matrix Attack Algorithm (MA)

1: Input: G(N, l), K, wi
2: Output: Cn
3: Establish matrices PK and KN
4: Calculate PN
5: Calculate PLN using Algorithm 2
6: Calculate M
7: Calculate MC
8: while Network is not compromised do

9: Find t = arg minj ∈N Pi=1 mci,j
10: Attack nt , Cn = Cn ∪ nt
11: Adjust MC
12: end while
13: return Cn

Algorithm 3 proceeds as follows: originally, the information of the network, the

keys and the energy cost are obtained by the attacker. He firstly establishes the matrix
PK. He calculates the matrix KN, which expresses the key possession of the nodes.
 C. Lin, G. Wu

He calculates PN to get the direct compromise relationship between nodes and paths.
Then he calculates the matrices PLN, M and MC. After that, the procedure of the
node capture attack begins. In thematrix MC, the attacker needs to find the index
of node meeting t = arg minj ∈N Pi=1 mci,j . This is because capturing nt has the
following features: (1) it causes the maximum number of compromised paths, which
induces the maximum destructiveness to the network, and (2) it consumes the least
energy. Then the attacker captures nt . After that, the attacker adjusts the matrix. The
attacker should recalculate the entries of the MC, using Eq. (5). Once a node is cap-
tured, the cost of capturing such a node is represented as +∞, which ensures that
each node can only be captured at most once.
The node-capturing process ends when the network is compromised, and the set
of the compromised nodes will be returned as the output of the algorithm.

5 A case study

We give an example to illustrate our proposed scheme. The network topology is de-
picted as Fig. 1. Every node is pre-distributed with three keys. We use the ADOV
routing protocol to construct paths and randomly select five paths. The information
of the key distribution is shown in Table 2. To qualify the resource expenditure (i.e.
the energy cost) in compromising a node, we randomly generate the cost (0, 1) for
compromising each node. Since we regard that the sink nodes cannot be attacked,
we set the resource expenditure in compromising the sinks nodes (i.e. the destination
nodes) as +∞. The information of the key distribution and costs is listed in Table 2.
Firstly, we calculate the value PK, KN, PN and PLN according to Eqs. (1)–(3) and
Algorithm 2 as:
⎡ ⎤
0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0
⎢1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0⎥
⎢ ⎥
PK = ⎢ ⎢1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0⎥
⎥
⎣0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0⎦
1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1

Fig. 1 The topology of the network

Enhancing the attacking efficiency of the node capture attack

Table 2 Information of key distribution and costs

ID Keys Cost ID Keys Cost

s1 {key1 , key2 , key3 } 0.879 s2 {key2 , key4 , key6 } 0.244

n1 {key1 , key3 , key5 } 0.731 n2 {key3 , key7 , key8 } 0.443
n3 {key1 , key7 , key10 } 0.245 n4 {key4 , key10 , key11 } 0.165
n5 {key2 , key8 , key9 } 0.457 n6 {key1 , key6 , key10 } 0.762
n7 {key2 , key5 , key11 } 0.873 d1 {key9 , key10 , key11 } +∞
d2 {key7 , key9 , key10 } +∞

⎡ ⎤
1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0
⎢1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1⎥
⎢ ⎥
KN = ⎢
⎢0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0⎥⎥
⎢0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎣0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0⎦
0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1
⎡ ⎤
1 0 1 2 1 0 0 0 0
⎢1 0 1 0 2 1 0 2 0⎥
⎢ ⎥
PN = ⎢
⎢1 1 1 0 1 0 0 2 0⎥⎥
⎣1 1 0 0 0 0 2 0 1⎦
1 0 1 0 2 2 0 2 1

By using Algorithm 2, we obtain the matrix PLN as:

⎡ ⎤
0 0 0 0 16 0 0 0 0
⎢ ⎥
⎢ 0 0 0 0 16 0 0 1
0⎥
⎢ 6 ⎥
PLN = ⎢ 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0⎥
⎢ 6 6 ⎥
⎣0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0⎦
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

We set α = 0.8 and δ = 15. Finally, we obtain MC as:

⎡ ⎤
0.9101 δ 1.0944 3.6117 3.4014 δ δ δ δ
⎢ ⎥
⎢ 0.9101 ⎥
⎢ δ 1.0944 δ 6.6667 4.8485 δ 0.0021 δ ⎥
⎢ ⎥
MC = ⎢
⎢ 0.9101 3.2787 1.0944 0.0752 3.2653 0.2020 δ 0.0021 δ ⎥ ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ 0.9101 3.2787 δ δ δ δ 3.5011 δ 0.9164 ⎥
⎣ ⎦
0.9101 δ 1.0944 δ 6.5306 9.6970 δ 0.0021 0.9164

By referring to Algorithm 3, s1 will be captured and the network will be compro-

mised.
 C. Lin, G. Wu

Table 3 Experiment parameters

Item Value

Number of nodes 500

Number of keys assigned to a node {25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55}
Region size 25 m × 25 m
Sensing range 2m
Distribution of wi U (0, 1)
Number of source nodes 100
Number of destination nodes 10
Key pool size 5000
Routing protocol Single path routing protocol (GBR)
Multiple paths routing protocol (ADOV)
Attacking algorithms MA, RA, MKA, MLA, MTA, GNAVE

From the case we note that the node, through attack that can cause the maximum
destructiveness and the minimum energy cost in compromising the network, will be
captured. In other words, the matrix-based attack can provide a way of evaluating the
destructiveness of the attack and introduce a method of estimating the vulnerability
of the network.
For example, in the view of the attacker, the target node selected by MA can cause
the maximum destructiveness. On the contrary, from the perspective of network se-
curity, the defender should find the vulnerable point to strengthen the security pro-
tection. By utilizing MA, the defender can easily find that s1 is the most vulnerable
point.
Therefore, MA can not only provide a way of evaluating the destructiveness but
also propose an approach of estimating the vulnerable points in the network.

6 Simulations and experiments

To analyze the performance of the proposed node capture attack algorithm, we con-
duct the following experiments. The parameters of the experiments are shown in Ta-
ble 3.
In the network, 500 nodes are deployed, 100 source nodes and 10 destination
nodes are randomly selected. Each node is randomly pre-distributed with several
keys selected from the key pool of the size 5000. In the network, two types of routing
protocol are implemented to shown the performance of MA under different circum-
stances: the single path routing protocol, the multiple paths routing protocol. We
measure the performance of our node capture attack in terms of attacking rounds,
execution time, fraction of the compromised traffic, and the energy cost.
To show the advantages of our node capture attack, we compare the performance
of our algorithm with other node capture attacks, which are illustrated in Refs. [33–
35].
Random Attack (RA), nodes are captured independently at random.
Enhancing the attacking efficiency of the node capture attack

Maximum Key Attack (MKA), nodes are captured to maximize the number of
compromised keys.
Maximum Link Attack (MLA), nodes are captured to maximize the number of the
compromised links.
Maximum Traffic Attack (MTA), nodes are captured to maximize the ratio of com-
promised traffic.
Greedy Node capture Approximation using Vulnerability Evaluation (GNAVE)
[33–35], nodes are captured iteratively, aiming at capturing the node with the highest
vulnerability in the network.
All the algorithms have the same input knowledge as MA (i.e. G(N, l), K, wi );
we develop a simulator to measure characteristic of the experiments (i.e. attacking
rounds, execution time, fraction of the compromised traffic, and the energy cost).

6.1 Attacking rounds to compromise the network

In this experiment, we count how many rounds (i.e. the number of nodes the attacker
needs to capture to compromise the network) the adversary needs to attack to com-
promise the network. The results are shown in Fig. 2. The x-coordinate indicates
how many keys are assigned to each node, while the y-coordinate, how many rounds
each algorithm needs to attack to compromise the network. In Fig. 2a, we depict
the attacking rounds of each algorithm using GBR routing protocol (i.e. the single
path routing protocol). We note that the attacking rounds of RA, MKA and MLA are
higher than in the other three algorithms. This is because in RA, nodes are captured
independently at random; therefore the number of the attacking rounds is the biggest.
In MKA, the attacker needs to capture the node that can maximize the number of the
compromised keys. Therefore, a node that does not locate in any path still has the
opportunity of being attacked and the number of attacking rounds is big. In MLA, the
attacker seeks to maximize the number of the compromised links. Since each path is
composed of multiple links, therefore a path may be attacked more than once, and
the number of attacking rounds is big. In MTA, the attacker iteratively captures the
node with the maximum traffic to compromise the network. The number of attacking
rounds is much smaller than in RA, MKA and MLA. But when mounting an MTA
attack, the attacker can only search the nodes within the paths. Other nodes that do
not locate in the paths will no longer be considered. In GNAVE, the same problem
still exists; therefore, the number of attacking rounds is a little bigger than in MA. In
MA, the nodes that do not locate within the paths still have the opportunity of being
attacked. Therefore, the solution obtained in MA is more optimal than in MTA and
GNAVE. The attacking rounds of MA are 13.5 % smaller than GNAVE.
In Fig. 2b, the AODV routing protocol is used. We count the attacking rounds of
each algorithm to compromise the network. From Fig. 2b we note that the number
of the attacking rounds of the MA is the smallest and the reason is the same as in
Fig. 2a. MA is 17.8 % smaller than GNAVE in attacking rounds.
Therefore, we can conclude that the number of attacking rounds of MA is smaller
than of RA, MKA, MLA, MTA and GNAVE.
 C. Lin, G. Wu

Fig. 2 Attacking rounds under different routing protocols: (a) single path routing protocol, (b) multiple
paths routing protocol

6.2 Execution time to compromise the network

In this experiment, we measure how long each node capture attack algorithm spends
to compromise the network. We depict the results of the experiment in Fig. 3. The
x-coordinate indicates the number of keys pre-distributed to each sensor node, while
the y-coordinate, how much time each algorithm consumes to compromise the net-
work, in milliseconds. In Fig. 3a, we use the GBR routing protocol to set up path
from the source nodes to the destination nodes. We measure the execution time and
depict it in the figure. We note that GNAVE consumes the longest time because, when
calculating the route vulnerability, each node needs to calculate such values for all the
routes. With the calculation going on, the number of the compromised keys increases
dramatically, which thus causes the dramatical increase of running time consumed
in calculating the route vulnerability. Therefore the time is the longest. In MLA, the
attacker needs to scan all the nodes to find the node that can lead to the maximum
number of the compromised links; the execution time is longer than in MKA, RA,
MTA and MA. Intuitively, the attacker mounting RA should finish compromising the
network in the shortest time. In fact, the attacker needs to attack more nodes than in
other algorithms. Therefore, RA consumes longer time to compromise the network
than MKA, MTA and MA. In MKA, the attacker iteratively selects the node that can
lead to the maximum number of the compromised keys; the execution time is bigger
than in MA and MTA. The execution times of MA and MTA are nearly the same.
They destroy confidentiality of the networks from the view of the network topology.
In MTA, the node that will lead to the maximum compromise of the traffic will be
captured. We can obviously note that the execution time of MA is the shortest. This
is because in MA, the attacker iteratively captures the node that can lead to compro-
mising the maximum number of paths while consuming the lowest energy. Therefore,
the execution time of MA is the shortest. MA is 2.3 % shorter than MTA in execution
time in the single path routing protocol.
In Fig. 3b, the AODV routing protocol is implemented, and we can draw the same
conclusion as in Fig. 3a. MA is 2.1 % shorter than MTA in execution time in multiple
paths routing protocol.
We can conclude that, compared with RA, MKA, MLA, MTA and GNAVE, the
execution time of MA is the shortest.
Enhancing the attacking efficiency of the node capture attack

Fig. 3 Execution time under different routing protocols: (a) single path routing protocol, (b) multiple
paths routing protocol

Fig. 4 Fraction of compromised traffic under different routing protocols: (a) single path routing protocol,
(b) multiple paths routing protocol

6.3 Fraction of the compromised traffic

In this experiment, we measure the ratio of the compromised paths among all the
paths. The fractions of the compromised traffic of all the algorithms are shown in
Fig. 4. The x-coordinate indicates how many nodes the attacker captures, while the
y-coordinate, the fraction of the traffic compromised by the attacker. The fraction
of the compromised traffic can express the efficiency of the attack. The quicker the
fraction of the compromised traffic approaches 1, the higher is the attacking efficiency
of that algorithm. In this experiment, we mainly analyze the circumstance that each
node is distributed with 50 keys.
From Fig. 4a we note that MA can approach 1 the quickest, because this type of
attack aims at capturing the nodes that can lead to compromising the maximum num-
ber of paths in the network; therefore, it causes the maximum destructiveness to the
network. GNAVE, MTA, MKA, MLA and RA need to capture more nodes to destroy
the confidentiality of the network. We can conclude that the attacking efficiency of
MA is the highest.
 C. Lin, G. Wu

Fig. 5 Energy cost under different routing protocols: (a) single path routing protocol, (b) multiple paths
routing protocol

Figure 4b shows the attacking efficiency of each algorithm in AODV routing pro-
tocol. We note that no matter, in GBR or AODV, the fraction of the compromised
traffic of MA can the first approach 1.
We can conclude that the attacking efficiency of MA is higher than that of RA,
MKA, MLA, MTA and GNAVE.

6.4 Energy cost

In this experiment, we measure how much energy each algorithm spends in compro-
mising the network. The energy cost of capturing a node applies U (0, 1) distribution.
The more nodes the attacker captures, the more energy he will consume. Figure 5
shows the resource expenditure of each algorithm in compromising the network in
different routing protocols. Both of them can manifest that the energy cost of MA
is the lowest. This is because this type of node capture attack captures the minimum
number of nodes to compromise the network. Other algorithms consume more energy
because of a bigger number of attacking rounds in compromising the network. MA
is 18.3 and 19.6 % smaller than GNAVE in resource expenditure respectively in the
single path and the multiple paths routing protocols.
α
6.5 Performance under different 1−α

In this experiment, we measure the attacking rounds under different values of β =

α
1−α . We want to figure out the influence of the parameter β on the attacking rounds.
In Fig. 6, the x-coordinate indicates the number of keys each node is assigned, while
the y-coordinate, the attacking rounds of MA to compromise the network. Referring
to Eq. (4), the bigger value of β indicates the higher importance of “direct compro-
mise.” We note that the bigger β results in smaller attacking rounds in both GBR and
ADOV routing protocols.
This phenomenon manifests that when mounting a node capture attack, the adver-
sary should pay close attention to the direct compromise relationship, which means
that in each round, the attacker should capture the node that can lead to the maximum
number of compromised paths.
Enhancing the attacking efficiency of the node capture attack

Fig. 6 The influence of β under different routing protocols: (a) single path routing protocol, (b) multiple
paths routing protocol

7 Conclusion

In this paper, we propose a high efficiency and low energy cost node capture attack
algorithm named MA on random key pre-distribution in wireless sensor network. We
utilize matrices to indicate the compromising relationship between nodes and paths.
We propose a node capture attack algorithm that focuses on capturing the node, which
can cause the maximum destructiveness while consuming the least energy. Simula-
tion results reveal that MA can reduce the attacking rounds, shorten the execution
time, enhance the attacking efficiency, and reduce the energy cost.
In the future, our research will be taken from the following perspectives:
• In theoretical aspect, we will use the graph base approach to model the process of
the node capture attack in a more theoretical way.
• In the optimization perspective, we will design optimal methods to enhance the
performance of MA under different key pre-distribution mechanism; moreover,
we will design an adaptive way to adjust the value of α.
• To put the MA attack into practice, we will research how to mount a node capture
attack in the real application, for example the MANET or VANET, and develop the
corresponding counter-measure for providing the security of the systems.

Acknowledgements This research is sponsored in part by the National Natural Science Foundation
of China and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (contract/grant number:
No. 61173179 and No. 61202441). This research is also sponsored in part by the Fundamental Research
Funds for the Central Universities (No. DUT13JS10).

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