A Unified Wormhole Attack Detection Framework for Mobile Ad hoc Networks

The Internet is experiencing an evolution towards a ubiquitous network paradigm, via the so-called internet-of-things (IoT), where small wireless computing devices like sensors and actuators are integrated into daily activities. Simultaneously, infrastructure-less systems such as mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) are gaining popularity since they provide the possibility for devices in wireless sensor networks or vehicular ad hoc networks to share measured and monitored information without having to be connected to a base station. While MANETs offer many advantages, including self-configurability and application in rural areas which lack network infrastructure, they also present major challenges especially in regard to routing security. In a highly dynamic MANET, where nodes arbitrarily join and leave the network, it is difficult to ensure that nodes are trustworthy for multi-hop routing. Wormhole attacks belong to most severe routing threats because they are able to disrupt a major part of the network traffic, while concomitantly being extremely difficult to detect. This thesis presents a new unified wormhole attack detection framework which is effective for all known wormhole types, alongside incurring low false positive rates, network loads and computational time, for a variety of diverse MANET scenarios. The framework makes three original technical contributions: i) a new accurate wormhole detection algorithm based on packet traversal time and hop count analysis (TTHCA) which identifies infected routes, ii) an enhanced, dynamic traversal time per hop analysis (TTpHA) detection model which is adaptable to node radio range fluctuations, and iii) a method for automatically detecting time measurement tampering in both TTHCA and TTpHA. The thesis findings indicate that this new wormhole detection framework provides significant performance improvements compared to other existing solutions by accurately, efficiently and robustly detecting all wormhole variants under a wide range of network conditions

Security wireless sensor networks: prospects, challenges, and future

With the advancements of networking technologies and miniaturization of electronic devices, wireless sensor network (WSN) has become an emerging area of research in academic, industrial, and defense sectors. Different types of sensing technologies combined with processing power and wireless communication capability make sensor networks very lucrative for their abundant use in near future. However, many issues are yet to be solved before their full-scale practical implementations. Among all the research issues in WSN, security is one of the most challenging topics to deal with. The major hurdle of securing a WSN is imposed by the limited resources of the sensors participating in the network. Again, the reliance on wireless communication technology opens the door for various types of security threats and attacks. Considering the special features of this type of network, in this chapter we address the critical security issues in wireless sensor networks. We talk about cryptography, steganography, and other basics of network security and their applicability in WSN. We explore various types of threats and attacks against wireless sensor networks, possible countermeasures, mentionable works done so far, other research issues, etc. We also introduce the view of holistic security and future trends towards research in wireless sensor network security

Security of the Internet of Things: Vulnerabilities, Attacks and Countermeasures

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) constitute one of the most promising third-millennium technologies and have wide range of applications in our surrounding environment. The reason behind the vast adoption of WSNs in various applications is that they have tremendously appealing features, e.g., low production cost, low installation cost, unattended network operation, autonomous and longtime operation. WSNs have started to merge with the Internet of Things (IoT) through the introduction of Internet access capability in sensor nodes and sensing ability in Internet-connected devices. Thereby, the IoT is providing access to huge amount of data, collected by the WSNs, over the Internet. Hence, the security of IoT should start with foremost securing WSNs ahead of the other components. However, owing to the absence of a physical line-of-defense, i.e., there is no dedicated infrastructure such as gateways to watch and observe the flowing information in the network, security of WSNs along with IoT is of a big concern to the scientific community. More specifically, for the application areas in which CIA (confidentiality, integrity, availability) has prime importance, WSNs and emerging IoT technology might constitute an open avenue for the attackers. Besides, recent integration and collaboration of WSNs with IoT will open new challenges and problems in terms of security. Hence, this would be a nightmare for the individuals using these systems as well as the security administrators who are managing those networks. Therefore, a detailed review of security attacks towards WSNs and IoT, along with the techniques for prevention, detection, and mitigation of those attacks are provided in this paper. In this text, attacks are categorized and treated into mainly two parts, most or all types of attacks towards WSNs and IoT are investigated under that umbrella: “Passive Attacks” and “Active Attacks”. Understanding these attacks and their associated defense mechanisms will help paving a secure path towards the proliferation and public acceptance of IoT technology

Synoptic analysis techniques for intrusion detection in wireless networks

Current system administrators are missing intrusion alerts hidden by large numbers of false positives. Rather than accumulation more data to identify true alerts, we propose an intrusion detection tool that e?ectively uses select data to provide a picture of ?network health?. Our hypothesis is that by utilizing the data available at both the node and cooperative network levels we can create a synoptic picture of the network providing indications of many intrusions or other network issues. Our major contribution is to provide a revolutionary way to analyze node and network data for patterns, dependence, and e?ects that indicate network issues. We collect node and network data, combine and manipulate it, and tease out information about the state of the network. We present a method based on utilizing the number of packets sent, number of packets received, node reliability, route reliability, and entropy to develop a synoptic picture of the network health in the presence of a sinkhole and a HELLO Flood attacker. This method conserves network throughput and node energy by requiring no additional control messages to be sent between the nodes unless an attacker is suspected. We intend to show that, although the concept of an intrusion detection system is not revolutionary, the method in which we analyze the data for clues about network intrusion and performance is highly innovative

A Taxonomy on Misbehaving Nodes in Delay Tolerant Networks

Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) are type of Intermittently Connected Networks (ICNs) featured by long delay, intermittent connectivity, asymmetric data rates and high error rates. DTNs have been primarily developed for InterPlanetary Networks (IPNs), however, have shown promising potential in challenged networks i.e. DakNet, ZebraNet, KioskNet and WiderNet. Due to unique nature of intermittent connectivity and long delay, DTNs face challenges in routing, key management, privacy, fragmentation and misbehaving nodes. Here, misbehaving nodes i.e. malicious and selfish nodes launch various attacks including flood, packet drop and fake packets attack, inevitably overuse scarce resources (e.g., buffer and bandwidth) in DTNs. The focus of this survey is on a review of misbehaving node attacks, and detection algorithms. We firstly classify various of attacks depending on the type of misbehaving nodes. Then, detection algorithms for these misbehaving nodes are categorized depending on preventive and detective based features. The panoramic view on misbehaving nodes and detection algorithms are further analyzed, evaluated mathematically through a number of performance metrics. Future directions guiding this topic are also presented

Formal modelling and analysis of denial of services attacks in wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have attracted considerable research attention in recent years because of the perceived potential benefits offered by self-organising, multi-hop networks consisting of low-cost and small wireless devices for monitoring or control applications in di±cult environments. WSN may be deployed in hostile or inaccessible environments and are often unattended. These conditions present many challenges in ensuring that WSNs work effectively and survive long enough to fulfil their functionalities. Securing a WSN against any malicious attack is a particular challenge. Due to the limited resources of nodes, traditional routing protocols are not appropriate in WSNs and innovative methods are used to route data from source nodes to sink nodes (base stations). To evaluate the routing protocols against DoS attacks, an innovative design method of combining formal modelling and computer simulations has been proposed. This research has shown that by using formal modelling hidden bugs (e.g. vulnerability to attacks) in routing protocols can be detected automatically. In addition, through a rigorous testing, a new routing protocol, RAEED (Robust formally Analysed protocol for wirEless sEnsor networks Deployment), was developed which is able to operate effectively in the presence of hello flood, rushing, wormhole, black hole, gray hole, sink hole, INA and jamming attacks. It has been proved formally and using computer simulation that the RAEED can pacify these DoS attacks. A second contribution of this thesis relates to the development of a framework to check the vulnerability of different routing protocols against Denial of Service(DoS) attacks. This has allowed us to evaluate formally some existing and known routing protocols against various DoS attacks iand these include TinyOS Beaconing, Authentic TinyOS using uTesla, Rumour Routing, LEACH, Direct Diffusion, INSENS, ARRIVE and ARAN protocols. This has resulted in the development of an innovative and simple defence technique with no additional hardware cost for deployment against wormhole and INA attacks. In the thesis, the detection of weaknesses in INSENS, Arrive and ARAN protocols was also addressed formally. Finally, an e±cient design methodology using a combination of formal modelling and simulation is propose to evaluate the performances of routing protocols against DoS attacks