A randomized, efficient, and distributed protocol for the detection of node replication attacks in wireless sensor networks

Mauro Conti, Roberto Di Pietro, Luigi Vincenzo Mancini, Alessandro Mei

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

163 Scopus citations

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks are often deployed in hostile environments, where anadversary can physically capture some of the nodes. Once a node is captured, the attackercan re-program it and replicate the node in a large number of clones, thus easily taking over the network. The detection of node replication attacks in a wireless sensor network is therefore a fundamental problem. A few distributed solutions have recently been proposed. However, these solutions are not satisfactory. First, they are energy and memory demanding: A serious drawback for any protocol that is to be used in resource constrained environment such as a sensor network. Further, they are vulnerable to specific adversary models introduced in this paper. The contributions of this work are threefold. First, we analyze the desirable properties of a distributed mechanism for the detection of node replication attacks. Second, we show that the known solutions for this problem do not completely meet our requirements. Third, we propose a new Randomized, Efficient, and Distributed (RED) protocol for the detection of node replication attacks and we show that it is completely satisfactory with respect to the requirements. Extensive simulations also show that our protocol is highly efficient in communication, memory, and computation, that it sets out an improved attack detection probability compared to the best solutions in the literature, and that it is resistant to the new kind of attacks we introduce in this paper, while other solutions are not. Copyright 2007 ACM.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing (MobiHoc)
Pages80-89
Number of pages10
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 1 2007
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Generated from Scopus record by KAUST IRTS on 2023-09-20

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'A randomized, efficient, and distributed protocol for the detection of node replication attacks in wireless sensor networks'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this