An intrusion detection system for selective forwarding attack in IPv6-based mobile WSNs

Abstract

Selective forwarding attack is considered among the most dangerous attack in wireless sensor networks, particularly in mobile environment. The attackers compromise legitimate nodes and selectively drop some packets. In addition to that, the movement of some nodes increases link failures, collisions and packet loss. So, it will be more difficult to detect malicious nodes from legitimates ones. This paper focuses on detecting selective forwarding attackers in IPv6-based mobile wireless sensor networks when the standardized IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) is used. Contrarily to previous works which propose solutions to detect selective forwarding attack in static wireless sensor networks, this paper deals with the case of networks with mobile sensors and proposes a novel intrusion detection system that combines Sequential Probability Ratio Test with an adaptive threshold of acceptable probability of dropped packets. Extensive simulations were performed and the results show that the detection probability is 100%.