A Lightweight Countermeasure to DIS Attack in RPL Routing Protocol
Ge Guo · 2021
RPL is a novel routing protocol designed for Low Power and Lossy Networks (LLNs) to meet the requirement of efficient resource consumption in the Internet of Things (IoT). Due to LLNs' inherent constraints of resources and its lack of security mechanisms, RPL is susceptible to various categories of attacks, including DODAG Information Solicitation (DIS) attack. In such an attack, a malicious node issues a great deal of DIS messages to cause the nodes in the neighborhood to reply excessive DODAG Information Object (DIO) messages and reset their trickle timers, resulting in the degradation of the network performance, premature depletion of the batteries of legitimate nodes, and even a network partition. In this paper, We present a lightweight countermeasure based on adaptively adjusted thresholds for detecting and defending against DIS attack. The simulations show that our countermeasure can effectively improve network performance under the DIS attack.