Cyberattacks and Countermeasures in RPL-based Industrial Internet of Things
Cong Pu · 2022
In the emerging internet of things (IoT) era, billions of intelligent machines and devices are seamlessly interconnected with each other over the Internet to exchange information and support decision-making. The IoT is progressively becoming an important aspect of the fourth industrial revolution (widely known as industrial internet of things [IIoT]) and provides an unprecedented opportunity to revolutionize traditional production and manufacturing processes. To achieve the goals and realize the vision of IIoT, a communication protocol specifically designed for networks with resource constraints and lossy communication links, a.k.a. RPL, has stood out from the crowd and quickly became a promising routing protocol for the IIoT. However, the security and privacy issues were not the major concerns when RPL was designed, thus it fails to meet the security requirements of IIoT. In this chapter, RPL routing protocol and its major component, Trickle algorithm, are first introduced. Then, we identify and analyze various RPL-specific attacks in the IIoT, discuss their corresponding countermeasures, and present their performance impact via preliminary simulation results. Finally, we conclude the chapter with future research directions, including interdisciplinary aspects and insights.