A Scheme for Adaptively Countering Application Layer Security Attacks in Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks, adversaries can easily launch application layer attacks, such as false data injection attacks and false vote insertion attacks. False data injection attacks may drain energy resources and waste real world response efforts. False vote insertion attacks would prevent reporting of important information on the field. In order to minimize the damage from such attacks, several prevention based solutions have been proposed by researchers, but may be inefficient in normal condition due to their overhead. Thus, they should be activated upon detection of such attacks. Existing detection based solutions, however, does not address application layer attacks. This paper presents a scheme to adaptively counter false data injection attacks and false vote insertion attacks in sensor networks. The proposed scheme consists of two sub-units: one used to detect the security attacks and the other used to select efficient countermeasures against the attacks. Countermeasures are activated upon detection of the security attacks, with the consideration of the current network status and the attacks. Such adaptive countering approach can conserve energy resources especially in normal condition and provide reliability against false vote insertion attacks.