A simulation platform for evaluating DoS attacks in wireless sensor networks
Eleni Darra, Christina Skouloudi, Sokratis K. Katsikas · 2015
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been studied in depth for several decades. Their main role is to provide bridges between the virtual world of information technology and the real physical world. They promise unprecedented new abilities to observe and understand large-scale, real-world phenomena at a fine spatio-temporal resolution. However, this potential does not come for free; WSNs have been known to be vulnerable to several types of attacks aiming at compromising their security. Among these types, Denial of Service (DoS) attacks stand out, as most WSNs are vulnerable to such attacks, which affect the routing behavior. This paper introduces a simulation platform, based on the network simulator ns-2, that allows the in-depth study of DoS attacks against WSNs. We simulate and analyze the performance of routing protocols for WSNs using a scenario-based experiment, in order to analyze the network's behavior under all the simulated attacks, namely Blackhole, Flooding, Rushing and Selective Forwarding. The analysis involves several network characteristics and is aimed towards identifying easily measured features that can be used for efficiently detecting and classifying DoS attacks in WSNs.