Abstract
Energy depletion attacks represent a challenging threat towards the secure and reliable deployment of low-power Internet of Things (IoT) networks. Indeed, by simply transmitting canning standard-compliant packets to a target IoT device, an adversary can quickly exhaust target devices available energy and reduce network lifetime, leading to extensive Denial-of-Service (DoS). Current solutions to tackle energy depletion attacks mainly rely on ex-post detection of the attack and the adoption of follow-up countermeasures. Still, the cited approaches cannot prevent external adversaries from sending wireless packets to target devices and draining down their energy budget. In this paper, we present RTSCA, a novel countermeasure to energy depletion attacks in IoT networks, that leverages Random Time-Slotted Channel Access. RTSCA randomizes channel access operations executed by a couple of directly-connected IoT devices operating through the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC, significantly reducing the time window of opportunity for the attacker, with little-to-none energy cost on legitimate IoT devices. RTSCA also includes a detection mechanism targeted to the recently-introduced Truncate-after-Preamble (TaP) energy depletion attacks, that leverages the observation of error patterns in the received packets. We carried out an extensive performance assessment campaign on real Openmote-b IoT nodes, showing that RTSCA forces the adversary to behave as a (sub-optimal) reactive jammer to achieve energy depletion attacks. In such a setting, the adversary has to spend between 42.5% and 55% more energy to carry out the attack, while at the same time having no deterministic chances of success.
Pietro Tedeschi
Head of Cyber Electromagnetic Warfare Research
My research interests include Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Security, Maritime Security, Wireless Security, Internet of Things (IoT), Applied Cryptography, Privacy Preserving Systems, and Cyber-Physical Systems Security.