The Impact Of Network Layer Attacks In Wireless Sensor Networks

Security threats are present in Wireless Sensor Networks and aim to destruct, manipulate the network, or eavesdrop network traffic for malicious intent. The first line of defense is to prevent attacks, usually by applying cryptography, the second line of defense is detecting the presence of the attack within the network, and the third is stopping or recovering quickly from the attack. In this work we deal with the detection phase and examine the impact of routing layer attacks in WSNs in an effort to build better intrusion detection systems (IDS). IDSs base their detection decision on the knowledge gained from known attacks. The attacks' characteristics and methods to manipulate the network are analysed and used to drive recovery mechanisms. In this paper we implemented routing-layer packet drop attacks and investigated the impact of the attacks as "seen" from the Sink node and the victim node. We show that the attacks can have an effect on all network layers of the victim node and the degree of impact depends on many factors, including the topology of WSN and the distance from the Sink.