Traceback in wireless sensor networks with packet marking and logging

Abstract

In a hostile environment, sensor nodes may be compromised and then be used to launch various attacks. One severe attack is false data injection which is becoming a serious threat to wireless sensor networks. An attacker uses the compromised node to flood the network and exhaust network resources by injecting a large number of bogus packets. In this paper, we study how to locate the attack node using a framework of packet marking and packet logging. We propose a combined packet marking and logging scheme for traceback (CPMLT). In CPMLT, one packet can be marked by up to M nodes, each node marks a packet with certain probability. When one packet is marked by M nodes, the next marking node will log this packet. Through combining packet marking and logging, we can reconstruct the entire attack path to locate the attack node by collecting enough packets. In our simulation, CPMLT achieves fast traceback with little logging overhead.