IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - September/October 2019 - 38

Information Security in WBSN

Figure 3. Security threats in WBSNs.

SECURITY THREATS IN SMART
HEALTHCARE
Figure 1. Architecture for smart healthcare system.

Smart healthcare has tight and strong ties with
the UAV while collecting and transmitting the
medical information with proper authentication.
The WBSNs are initially developed to connect personal consumer electronic devices to offer convenience to the users (Figure 1). Development of
remote health monitoring models/mechanisms
including MobiHealth,CareNet, CodeBlue, AlarmNet, is ongoing.3
One of the most significant hurdles while collecting and transmitting healthcare data from/to
medical vehicles is patient's data security.4,5
Figure 2 represents a scenario patient's critical
information is sent to doctors/surgeons; hacker
may overhear the clinical information. Later, an
attacker may send the captured information on
social sites comprising Facebook or Twitter, and
this action may put immense threats to the
patient's confidentiality.

Figure 2. Risks to medical information privacy in remote
healthcare.

Some of the most critical threats in WBSNs
are described in this section. The particular risks
that a WBSN has to face can be categorized into
outsider (passive) and insider (active) attacks
(Figure 3). In an outsider threat, the invader
node is not a sanctioned user of WBSNs. The
appropriate encryption and authentication techniques can be useful to prevent these attacks,
which may then be analyzed to discover system.
The intruder can only be used to apply passive
attacks. The active attack causes more risks in
the network because attackers acquire some
valuable information about users such as previous session keys or part of medical information.
Hence, the attackers can launch several kinds of
attacks without easily being detected.5
Eavesdropping: In WBSNs, wireless communication between the sensor nodes can be easily
interrupted by the invaders. This permits the
assailants to eavesdrop packets from every
node. It also assists the attackers to acquire critical medical information.
Traffic Analysis: In this kind of threat, attackers attempt to disorder the networks processes
by broadcasting high-energy signals, jamming
the communication between authentic nodes.
Data Modification: The overheard information is partially or wholly eradicated or replaced
by the invaders. The altered information is transmitted back to the actual receiver to attain some
illegal purpose.
Denial of Service (DoS): In case the medical
traffic is beyond the measurements of the networks, then the DoS attack can occur for WBSNs.
Replaying: A part of the endorsed information
can be snooped by the hacker and is transmitted
back to the original node after some time to accomplish the identical purpose in a different case.

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