Analysis of the RPL Version Number Attack with Multiple Attackers

Abstract

In this study, we aim to understand the effect of multiple Version Number Attackers (VNA) in RPL (IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks) -based Internet of Things (IoT) networks. VNA is one of the most detrimental Denial of Service (DoS) attack that targets the availability of IoT networks. Almost all of the studies targeting the VNA considered a single attacker. However, once an attacker has chance to compromise a node in the network, it may easily compromise more devices, thus 1) affect the performance of the network more and misuse the resources quicker, 2) circumvent the existing security mechanisms and 3) perform other attacks which require more than one malicious node (e.g., wormhole, etc.). Therefore, we have to take multiple attackers into account when designing security systems. In this work, we analyze the effect of multiple attackers from various points of view. Based on extensive simulations and analysis, we conclude that increasing the number of attackers affects only the packet delivery ratio and does not affect average network delay and average power consumption. Our results also show that attacking positions closer to the root cause longer delays and higher power consumption results while central attacking positions are more effective on the packet delivery ratio. Lastly, we evaluate the performance of a recently proposed mitigation technique against multiple attackers.