Wireless Sensor Networks: Active and Passive attacks - Vulnerabilities and Countermeasures

Wireless sensor network has attracted significant attention in research and development due to its tremendous applications in medical, military and defence, medical, environmental, industrial, infrastructure protection, and commercial applications to enable to interact with each other controlled remotely. A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) has wide applications such as environmental monitoring and tracking of the target nodes for communication. The sensor nodes are equipped with wireless interfaces used for communication between the nodes and another network. Wireless Sensor Network suffers from many constraints that make security a primary challenge. When the sensor node is deployed in a communication environment unattended, the nodes are vulnerable to various attacks. This paper deals with the different types of Active and Passive security attacks in Wireless Sensor Networks to design effective countermeasures for secured communication. This paper will help researchers identify the most vulnerable attacks in the communication and defensive mechanisms to encounter the attacks in WSN.