Security in Wireless Sensor Networks with Mobile Codes

Security of wireless sensor networks (WSN) relates in many aspects to security of distributed systems. On the first sight WSNs form a large distributed ad-hoc system with lot of tiny devices that sense some phenomena and communicate wirelessly. Due to some limitations, among which the energy consumption problem is the most important one, security issues could demand different solutions than those used in the area of ordinary distributed systems. In this chapter, the authors briefly introduce the hardware and software approach to WSN design first, and then they define the main security aspects in such systems. Then some security mechanisms are presented, and their connection to possible countermeasures of the identified risks is described.