A novel countermeasure technique for reactive jamming attack in internet of things

Abstract

In recent years, Internet of Things (IoT) has attracted significant attention because of its wide range of applications in various domains. However, security is a growing concern as users of small devices in an IoT network are unable to defend themselves against reactive jamming attacks. These attacks negatively affect the performance of devices and hinder IoT operations. To address such an issue, this paper presents a novel countermeasure detection and consistency algorithm (CDCA), which aims to fight reactive jamming attacks on IoT networks. The proposed CDCA uses a change in threshold value to detect and treat an attack. The algorithm employs channel signal strength to check packet consistency by determining if the data transmission value contradicts the threshold value. The node that sends the threshold value is periodically checked and the threshold value is compared with the current value after data transmission to find out if an attack has occurred in the network. Based on realistic simulation scenarios (e.g., with varying traffic interval, number of malicious nodes, and random mobility patterns), the performance of the proposed CDCA is evaluated using a Cooja simulator. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed technique compared with contemporary schemes in terms of performance metrics such as energy consumption, traffic delay, and network throughput.