Detecting and Mitigating Energy Depletion Attack in IoT Networks

Abstract

A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a network made up of nodes having limited computational, processing, and energy capabilities. A node is capable of collecting information from sensors (e.g., temperature, pressure, humidity), process and exchange them with other nodes in the surrounding environment. The interaction of these nodes through the Internet has characterized a new paradigm, named as the Internet of Things (IoT). Standardization associations such as the IEEE and research centers have developed and published the IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.15.4e standards, which define the PHY and MAC layers specifications to setup a WSN. From the security perspective, jamming and energy-depletion attacks brought the scientific community's attention to identify countermeasures against denial-of-service attacks. In this work, we describe the Truncate-after-Preamble attack in IEEE 802.15.4 networks, whereby a receiver is not able to decode the incoming radio signal properly. The attacker adopts a standard preamble and packet length field to announce a large payload length but without transmitting any actual payload. With the help of a Software Defined Radio (SDR), we show that the common devices enabling the IEEE 802.15.4 paradigm are vulnerable to this attack, causing a considerable energy depletion for the receiver, with minimum effort for the attacker. Finally, we present an experimental methodology to detect and mitigate this type of attack by discriminating them from a common interference till the congestion scenario.

Date of Award	2021
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	HBKU College of Science and Engineering