In conjunction with

     24th IEEE International Performance Computing and Communications Conference (IPCCC 2005)     

April 7-9, 2005 ― Phoenix, Arizona

Call for Paper (PDF)

Recently, there has been a growing interest in the potential use of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in many applications such as smart environments, disaster management, combat field reconnaissance, and security surveillance. While the initial view of the community was that WSNs will play a complementary role that enhances the quality of these applications, recent research results have encouraged practitioners to envision an increased reliance on WSNs in such critical and sensitive applications.  Therefore, to realize their potential, necessary information assurance (IA) measures have to be incorporated in the design and during the operation of WSNs.  IA is usually specified in terms of attributes such as integrity, authenticity, confidentiality, availability, and survivability. A defense-in-depth approach to IA involves the activities of attack and failure prevention, detection and response, as well as the refinement of these activities. The scope of defense-in-depth may start with a diameter that spans the sensors deployed in a field to a diameter that includes the command nodes and likely beyond. Another dimension of defense-in-depth involves IA at, and cross-cutting, the different layers of the protocol stack, from the physical layer to the application layer.

Achieving information assurance in WSNs will require non-conventional mechanisms due to many factors including:  (1) sensors are significantly constrained in the amount of available resources such as energy, storage and computation; (2) sensors are expected to be deployed in very large numbers in normal as well as forbidding environments; (3) WSNs suffer from structural weakness and limited physical protection, and (4) localization of impact is complicated due to the un-tethered nature of the WSNs and of the potential attackers. In addition, IA requirements may vary according to a network's mission defined  over a multi-dimensional context, such as field of  deployment  (e.g.,  hostile  versus  friendly),  type of application  (e.g.,  monitoring,  tracking,  data collection), mode of   operation (e.g., normal, exception, post-event recovery), and time.

This workshop will foster a forum for discussing and presenting recent research results on Information assurance in wireless sensor networks. Best papers from WSNIA’2005 will be invited to a Special Issue of the Journal of Computer Security (http://www.csl.sri.com/programs/security/jcs/). Topics of interest include, although not limited to, the following:

• Fault and intrusion-tolerant architectural and operational models

• Robust routing, storage, and processing of sensed data

• Predictable MAC medium access arbitration

• IA architectures and protocols

• Vulnerabilities, attacks and countermeasures

• Monitoring and evaluation techniques

• Scalability and robust clustering techniques

• Resilient virtual infrastructures 

• Formal representation and verification of assurance properties

• Adaptive security and assurance techniques

• Quality of service provisioning

• Metrics for measuring security, assurance and dependability

• Privacy-aware dependable operation

• Simulation and visualization  environments

• Agent-based management for multi-tier WSNs

• WSNs as components of larger information grids

   

  Important dates:

            Submission deadline:                                 December 10, 2004 (extended)

            Decision notification:                                  December 23, 2004

            Final manuscript due:                                 January 15, 2005

  Submission instructions:

  Prospective authors should submit their paper electronically to toweissy@vt.edu or younis@csee.umbc.edu.  Papers should contain original material and not be previously published, or currently submitted for consideration elsewhere. The manuscript should not exceed 20 double-space pages in MS-Word, PS or PDF. The manuscript should be in a single column font size 11 or larger format. The first page should include title, authors' contact information, an abstract and five keywords. Authors should attach the paper abstract to their message.

  Workshop Co-Chairs:

  Mohamed Eltoweissy Department of Computer Science Virginia Tech 7054 Haycock Rd, Falls Church, VA 22043 Voice: (703)538-8374, FAX: (703)538-8320 E-mail: toweissy@vt.edu

  Mohamed Younis Department of Computer Science and Elect. Eng. University of Maryland Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 Voice: (410)455-3968, FAX: (410)455-3968 E-mail: younis@csee.umbc.edu

  Publicity Co-Chair

  Denis Gracanin Department of Computer Science Virginia Tech Blacksburg, VA  24061, USA E-mail: gracanin@vt.edu

  Ahmed Safwat Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Queen's University Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6 E-mail: ahmed.safwat@ece.queensu.ca

  Program Committee: (under construction)

• Giuseppe Anastasi, University of Pisa, Italy

• Khaled Arisha, Honeywell, USA

• Mohammed Atiquzzaman, University of Oklahoma, USA

• Erdal Cayirci,, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey

• Ing-Ray Chen, Virginia Tech, USA

• Robert H. Deng, Singapore Management University, Singapore

• Mootaz Elnozahy, IBM Research, USA

• Sonia Fahmy , Purdue University, USA

• Sandeep Gupta, Arizona State University, USA

• Hossam Hassanein, Queens University, Canada

• Sushil Jajodia, George Mason University, USA

• John McDermott, Naval Research Lab, USA

• Shivakant Mishra, University of Colorado, USA

• Stephan Olariu, Old Dominion University, USA

• Jung-Min Park, Virginia Tech, USA

• Jochen Schiller,, Freie University, GermanyA

• David Simplot-Ryl, NRIA Futurs, France

• Ivan Stojmenovic, University of Ottawa, Canada

• Albert Y. Zomaya, University of Sydney, Australia