Monitoring Agent for Detecting Malicious Packet Drops for Wireless Sensor Networks in the Microgrid and Grid-Enabled Vehicles

Abstract

Of the range of wireless communication technologies, wireless sensor networks (WSN) will be one of the most appropriate technologies for the Microgrid and Grid-enabled Vehicles in the Smartgrid. To ensure the security of WSN, the detection of attacks is more efficient than their prevention because of the lack of computing power. Malicious packet drops are the easiest means of attacking WSNs. Thus, the sensors used for constructing a WSN require a packet drop monitoring agent, such as Watchdog. However, Watchdog has a partial drop problem such that an attacker can manipulate the packet dropping rate below the minimum misbehaviour monitoring threshold. Furthermore, Watchdog does not consider real traffic situations, such as congestion and collision, and so it has no way of recognizing whether a packet drop is due to a real attack or network congestion. In this paper, we propose a malicious packet drop monitoring agent, which considers traffic conditions. We used the actual traffic volume on neighbouring nodes and the drop rate while monitoring a sending node for specific period. It is more effective in real network scenarios because unlike Watchdog it considers the actual traffic, which only uses the Pathrater. Moreover, our proposed method does not require authentication, packet encryption or detection packets. Thus, there is a lower likelihood of detection failure due to packet spoofing, Man-In-the Middle attacks or Wormhole attacks. To test the suitability of our proposed concept for a series of network scenarios, we divided the simulations into three types: one attack node, more than one attack nodes and no attack nodes. The results of the simulations meet our expectations.

Packet Drop Attack Detection Techniques in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks: A Review

“…Table 2. DEVi sorted in descending order [19] Also a parameter Dn (Average packet drop rate (ADR) /2) is calculated. If a node has DEVi more than Dn, it's assumed to be normal otherwise it's considered malicious.…”

“…Monitoring Agent Technique [19], proposed the monitoring agent technique. The technique is based on capturing packets sent by neighboring nodes within a transmission range.…”

“…Figure 6. An illustration of monitoring Agent [19] Table 1. Measured sample values [19] From table 1, node A is assumed to be a malicious node due to its high packet drop rate.…”

“…An illustration of monitoring Agent [19] Table 1. Measured sample values [19] From table 1, node A is assumed to be a malicious node due to its high packet drop rate. Another parameter DEVi (ADR-DRi) helps in determining a suspicious node.…”

Cognitive Internet of Things-Oriented Multi-Domain Cooperation Dynamic Incentive Mechanism based on Reputation

“…By observing and monitoring cooperative behavior between nodes to punish uncooperative nodes, to ensure that all nodes are able to cooperate actively. Watchdog [3] and Pathrater [4] mechanism were proposed earliest, used to solve network problems of routing error caused by selfish nodes. Watchdog is to detect inappropriate behavior nodes, where each node monitors its next hop node after sending or forwarding a packet: if there is no forwarding in the next hop node, it indicates some problems; on the basis of the detail collected information of the nodes, Pathrater assesses trust level of each path, trying to avoid the potentially problematic nodes.…”