Security attacks and secure routing protocols in RPL-based Internet of Things: Survey

Abstract

Internet of Things (loT) could be described as the pervasive and global network which aids and provides a system for the monitoring and control of the physical world through the collection, processing and analysis of generated data by IoT sensor devices. It is projected that by 2020 the number of connected devices is estimated to grow exponentially to 50 billion. The growing interest for the Internet of Things is contributing to the large-scale deployment of Low power and Lossy Networks (LLN). These networks support communications amongst sensor devices from the real world and their interconnection to the Internet. An open standard routing protocol called RPL has been specified by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in order to address the specific properties and constraints of these networks. However, this protocol is exposed to a large variety of attacks. Their consequences can be quite significant in terms of network performance and resources It is apparent that security will pose a fundamental enabling factor for the successful deployment and use of most IoT applications and in particular secure routing among IoT sensor nodes thus, mechanisms need to be designed to provide secure routing communications for devices enabled by the IoT. In this paper, we identified the taxonomy of the attack and describe how topology attacks are prevented in RPl and further discuss secure routing protocols used in the internet of Things (IoT).