A Distributed and Cooperative Verification Mechanism to Defend against DODAG Version Number Attack in RPL

Abstract

To design a routing protocol for Low-power and Lossy Networks (LLNs), the IETF developed RPL (Routing Protocol for Low-power and lossy network) which is novel, standard and light weight routing protocol standardized for constrained environment and does not have the functionality like of traditional routing protocols. Providing security in RPL is still challenging as the devices are connected to the vulnerable Internet, limited resources, and the communication links are lossy. Therefore, an attacker can easily exploit the functionalities of RPL protocol. RPL exposed to a variety of attacks. One of the most inconsistency topological attacks is DODAG version number attack. In this paper, we proposed a distributed and cooperative verification mechanism to securely defend against the DODAG version number attack with low control overhead and high reliability. Simulation results show that the proposed approach defends DODAG version number attack reliably and reduces control overhead significantly.