DoS detection in WSNs: Energy‐efficient methods for selecting monitoring nodes

Abstract

Summary The use of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has increased rapidly over the last years. Due to their low resources, sensors come along with new issues regarding network security and energy consumption. Focusing on the network availability, previous studies proposed to protect clustered network against denial of service attacks with the use of traffic monitoring agents on some nodes. Those control nodes have to analyze the traffic inside a cluster and to send warnings to the cluster head whenever an abnormal behavior (e.g., high packets throughput or non‐retransmission of packets) is detected. But if the control nodes (cNodes) die out of exhaustion, they leave the network unprotected. To better fight against attacks, we try to enhance this solution by renewing periodically the election process. Furthermore, we propose three energy‐aware and secure methods to designate the cNodes in a hierarchically clustered WSN. The first one is a simple self‐election process where nodes randomly designate themselves. It leads to a better load balancing than a static method (i.e., with no renewal), but we argue that we can obtain better results by considering the remaining energy of the nodes at cNodes selection time. Hence, the second algorithm is purely based on the residual energy of the sensors. We discuss limitations of this deterministic process concerning security and cluster coverage and suggest workarounds. These improvements lead us to the third mechanism. It is based on residual energy too, but it includes a democratic election process in which nodes in the cluster vote to optimize the cNode role attribution. Results obtained from simulation experiments with the ns‐2 tool are provided to analyze the energy repartition in the network and to compare the three selection algorithms. All experimental outcomes show improvements of the load balancing in the network, while maintaining good detection coverage, in regard to static selection. Furthermore, the analysis of the respective performances of the three mechanisms is used as a basis to establish recommendations regarding the use cases of those methods. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Exact and approximation algorithms for sensor placement against DDoS attacks

“…In this paper, the focus is on the placing of detection sensors. There are several works in this field: Jeong et al (2004) and Islam et al (2008) minimize the number of sensors such that every path of a given length (r) contains a sensor; Armbruster et al (2007) analyze the problem of packet filter placement to defend a network against spoofed denial of service attacks; Monnet et al (2017) place control nodes in clustered WSNs to save the energy of nodes; Fayaz et al (2015) address the resource management problem to determine the number and location of defense VMs, which combines detection node placement with a re-routing strategy. This paper concentrates on the costly deployment of detection sensors (probes) against multiple-target flooding attacks.…”

“…For certain types of attack (direct floods without transport/network signature), the article suggests a location-based filtering approach that compares traffic volumes for ISP-ISP links during normal operation and during an attack. Monnet et al (2017) place control nodes (CNs) in a clustered wireless sensor network (WSN). The CN detects abnormal behavior (DoS) and reports it to a cluster leader up in the WSN hierarchy.…”

A brief review on integration between wireless sensor networks and Cloud

“…Several research works have been achieved to help secure the WSN against different types of attacks while spending minimal energy. 37,38 Among the proposed solutions we cite the example of the work performed by Monnet et al 39 which constitutes an improvement method of monitoring nodes selection to detect DoS attacks.…”

Foreword to the special issue of the International Conference on Innovative Network Systems and Applications held under the Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems

“…Authors present an activity model of the network and evaluate how the remaining energy behaves to predict the energy consumption of the nodes. The ratio between the network security and energy consumption is discussed in . Three energy‐aware security methods for hierarchically clustered wireless sensor network were presented and evaluated through simulation scenarios as a basis to establish recommendations regarding the use cases of those methods.…”