Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
An extension of a DoS attack is a distributed DoS attack, where an attacker takes con-
trol of a few nodes in the network, leading to a distributed flood attack against the victim.
2.2.3.2 HELLO Flood Attack
One of the common techniques to discover neighbors is to send HELLO packets. If a
node receives a HELLO packet, it indicates that it is within the range of communica-
tion. However, a laptop-class adversary can easily send HELLO packets with sufficient
power to convince the sensor nodes that it is in proximity of communication and may be
a potential neighbor. The adversary can also impersonate a sink node or a cluster node.
2.2.3.3 Jamming
Jamming is one of the most lethal types of attacks in WSN and is a direct way to
compromise the entire wireless network. In this type of attack, the attacker jams a
spectrum band with a powerful transmitter, and prevents any member of the network
in the affected area from transmitting or receiving any packet. Jamming attacks can
be divided into constant jamming and sporadic jamming. Sporadic jamming can be
very effective at times when a change in one bit of a data frame will force the receiver
to drop it. In this kind of attack, it is difficult for the victim to identify whether his
band is being jammed intentionally or due to channel interference, and his immediate
reaction is usually to increase his transmitting power, thereby depleting resources at a
faster rate. Jamming attacks target the physical and MAC layers. Xu et al. discuss four
types of jamming attacks (random, reactive, deceptive, and constant) which would
result in DoS attacks (Xu et al. 2005). They conclude that detection schemes can be
very complex with reference to differentiating malicious attacks from link impairment.
2.2.3.4 Collision
Collision attacks target the MAC layer to create costly exponential back-off. Whenever
collision occurs, the nodes should retransmit packets affected by collision, thus lead-
ing to multiple retransmissions. The amount of energy expended by the attacker is
much less than the energ y expended (batter y exhaustion) by the sensor nodes. Collision
attack can be categorized under resource exhaustion attacks.
2.2.3.5 Node Compromise
Node compromise is one of the most common and detrimental attacks in WSN. As
sensors can be deployed in harsh environments such as a battlefield, ocean bed, or
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