Defending against path-based DoS attacks in wireless sensor networks

Denial of service (DoS) attacks can cause serious damage in resourceconstrained, wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This paper addresses an especially damaging form of DoS attack, called PDoS (Path-based Denial of Service). In a PDoS attack, an adversary overwhelms sensor nodes a long distance away by flooding a multihop end-to-end communication path with either replayed packets or injected spurious packets. This paper proposes a solution using one-way hash chains to protect end-to-end communications in WSNs against PDoS attacks. The proposed solution is lightweight, tolerates bursty packet losses, and can easily be implemented in modern WSNs. The paper reports on performance measured from a prototype implementation. Categories and Subject Descriptors K.6.5 [Computing Milieux]: Management of Computing and Information Systems—Security and Protection; I.2.9 [Sensors] General Terms Security Keywords Security, Sensor Networks, Denial of Services Attacks

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: SASN
• Authors: Jing Deng, Richard Han, Shivakant Mishra
• Keywords: End-to-end Communications, Pdos Attacks, SASN 2005, Sensor Networks