Introducing Network Coding to RPL: The Chained Secure Mode (CSM)

The current standard of Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) incorporates three modes of security: the Unsecured Mode (UM), Preinstalled Secure Mode (PSM), and the Authenticated Secure Mode (ASM). While the PSM and ASM are intended to protect against external routing attacks and some replay attacks (through an optional replay protection mechanism), recent research showed that RPL in PSM is still vulnerable to many routing attacks, both internal and external. In this paper, we propose a novel secure mode for RPL, the Chained Secure Mode (CSM), based on the concept of intraflow Network Coding. The main goal of CSM is to enhance RPL resilience against replay attacks, with the ability to mitigate some of them. The security and performance of a proof-of-concept prototype of CSM were evaluated and compared against RPL in UM and PSM (with and without the optional replay protection) in the presence of Neighbor attack as an example. It showed that CSM has better performance and more enhanced security compared to both the UM and PSM with the replay protection. On the other hand, it showed a need for a proper recovery mechanism for the case of losing a control message.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, Accepted at The 19th IEEE International Symposium on Network Computing and Applications (NCA 2020

Securing RPL using Network Coding: The Chained Secure Mode (CSM)

As the de facto routing protocol for many Internet of Things (IoT) networks nowadays, and to assure the confidentiality and integrity of its control messages, the Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) incorporates three modes of security: the Unsecured Mode (UM), Preinstalled Secure Mode (PSM), and the Authenticated Secure Mode (ASM). While the PSM and ASM are intended to protect against external routing attacks and some replay attacks (through an optional replay protection mechanism), recent research showed that RPL in PSM is still vulnerable to many routing attacks, both internal and external. In this paper, we propose a novel secure mode for RPL, the Chained Secure Mode (CSM), based on the concept of intraflow Network Coding (NC). The CSM is designed to enhance RPL resilience and mitigation capability against replay attacks while allowing the integration with external security measures such as Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs). The security and performance of the proposed CSM were evaluated and compared against RPL in UM and PSM (with and without the optional replay protection) under several routing attacks: the Neighbor attack (NA), Wormhole (WH), and CloneID attack (CA), using average packet delivery rate (PDR), End-to-End (E2E) latency, and power consumption as metrics. It showed that CSM has better performance and more enhanced security than both the UM and PSM with the replay protection, while mitigating both the NA and WH attacks and significantly reducing the effect of the CA in the investigated scenarios.Comment: 10 pages, 20 figures, 2 tables, Submitted to IEEE IoT Journal for review. This is an significantly extended version of arXiv:2006.00310 which was published in NCA 2020 (available at IEEExplore