Detection of Malicious Cluster Head causing Hello Flood Attack in LEACH Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks
Satwinder Kaur Saini, Mansi Gupta · 2014
Wireless Sensor networks have wide range applications using different routing protocols to route the data towards the sink. However, these protocols being too simple are prone to various attacks. LEACH is a highly secure protocol with dynamic selection of Cluster Heads based on Received Signal Strength. But as with other protocols, LEACH is prone to HELLO Flood Attack when the adversary becomes the Cluster Head and sensors being computation and energy constrained cryptographic approaches to prevent this attack are not too helpful. Some non-cryptographic methods to detect the HELLO Flood attack also exist but they are not too efficient as they result in large test packet overhead. In this paper an efficient non-cryptographic method for the detection and prevention of HELLO Flood attack in LEACH protocol is proposed which results in early detection with lesser energy and communication overhead.