Understanding Denial of Service Attacks in IoT Sensor and Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a pervasive technology that has been rapidly deployed in various application domains such as smart homes, healthcare and wearables due to its ease of use and cost efficiency. IoT systems make use of sensors to monitor a phenomenon of interest autonomously with little to no human intervention. These widely distributed sensor nodes form a wireless sensor network (WSN) for sensing, task management and data collection. Despite its evolution, security in WSNs remains an ongoing challenge due to its resource constraints and the wireless communication medium. Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, for instance, are the most frequent attacks on these networks, with detrimental consequences like continuous battery drain in sensors, node failure and a degradation in network coverage. However, it remains unclear why DoS attacks are prevalent in WSNs therefore this paper presents a comprehensive study of DoS attacks in WSNs discussing the network architecture, its constraints, the network layers and the types of DoS attacks that target each layer. This layered analysis reveals that energy is the ultimate vulnerability, with 60% of the attacks being battery depletion attacks, the majority of which target the Network Layer.