Toward a Threat Model for Energy-Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks

Security is a crucial matter for Wireless Sensor Networks. With the recent introduction of Energy-Harvesting nodes, it has gained even more importance. By exploiting the ability of scavenging energy from the surrounding environment, the lifespan of a node has drastically increased. This is one of the reasons why security needs a new take in this topic. Traditional solutions may not work in this new domain. Brand new challenges and threats may arise and new solutions have to be designed. In this paper we present a first taxonomy of attacks, focusing on how they change in the energy-harvesting context compared to regular sensor networks. We also discuss existing security solutions specific for the energy harvesting world and comment on the trend that this topic may follow in the future. Finally, we draw a comparison between the cyber-physical attacker we define in our model and adversary models belonging to security protocols verification literature.