Formally verified solution to resolve tunnel attacks in wireless sensor network

Abstract

In ad-hoc and wireless networks, Denial of Service (DoS) attacks has always been problematic during data routing. DoS attacks disrupt the data routing and avert the generated data to reach the destination or the sink nodes. In tunnel attack, which is one of the type of DoS attacks, the intruder attracts all the traffic towards itself and prevent it from forwarding further to the neighboring nodes. Researchers have presented multiple solutions to cater the problem and minimize or avoid the tunnel attacks, but they all have their shortcomings. The main reason behind all the drawbacks is that those solutions have not been confirmed using formal methods. The formal methods can be utilized to authenticate whether or not the solutions are immune to DoS attacks. In our previous researches, it has been revealed that by employing formal methods, our newly developed protocol RAEED can detect and avoid many DoS attacks. In this research paper, it has been proved using model checker that RAEED can efficiently avoid both simple and intelligent tunnel attacks. Moreover, the results of formal methods have been confirmed with the help of computer simulations as well as practical implementation on MicaZ motes. In future we aim to employ formal methods to verify more wireless communication issues in multiple protocols.