Distance Vector Based Detection of Node Replication Attacks in Wireless Sensor Networks

2 Abstract: Wireless sensor networks have been researched extensively over the past few years. It was initially used by the military for surveillance purposes and has since expanded into industrial and civilian uses such as weather, pollution, traffic control, healthcare applications etc. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) use small nodes called motes with constrained capabilities to sense, collect and disseminate information in many types of applications. As sensor networks become wide-spread, security issues become a central concern, especially in mission-critical tasks. When WSN are deployed in a hostile terrain environment, security becomes extremely important, as they are prone to different types of malicious attacks. Due to the poor physical protection of sensor nodes, it is generally assumed that an adversary can capture and compromise a small number of sensors in the network. In a node replication attack, an adversary can take advantage of the credentials of a compromised node to secretly introduce replicas of that node into the network. Without an effective and efficient detection mechanism, these replicas can be used to launch a variety of attacks that undermine many sensor applications and protocols. In this paper we present a distance vector based detection of node replication attacks instead of location based detection and other detection mechanisms proposed earlier for static sensor networks and also conclude that node replication attacks happen in physical and data link layer levels. The efficiency and security of our approach are also evaluated both theoretically and via simulation.