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Design and Implementation of a Lightweight Mitigation Solution for Addressing Network Partitioning Attack Against RPL Protocol

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Abstract

Routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks (RPL) is the standard routing protocol specified by the Internet engineering task force (IETF) for Low power and lossy Nnetworks (LLNs) based Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Although RPL gives many benefits to LLNs, due to the resource-constrained and easily tamperable nature of LLN devices, LLNs are vulnerable to a wide range of attacks that primarily alter the functioning of the RPL. One such attack is known as a Network partitioning attack (NPA). An NPA in RPL occurs when an attacker node intentionally divides a network into disjoint segments, preventing communication between nodes that may be previously able to communicate. This can happen when an attacker does not complete the route registration step at the root node, exploits the rank property of RPL, and continues the standard Destination advertisement object (DAO) forwarding technique of RPL during the node joining and DAG maintenance phase. Consequently, it segregates the section of nodes from the root node. In the literature, Enhanced-RPL (ERPL) is the only solution proposed to address NPA. However, our study shows that ERPL further induces fake Destination Advertisement Object Acknowledgement (DAO-ACK) and dropping DAO Attack, making it unsuitable for deployment in real-world applications. Our analysis indicates that the performance metrics of the network are not improved with the existing mitigation technique when the attacker unicasts fake DAO-ACK packets to victim client nodes. Our key idea is to improve the existing mitigation technique (ERPL) to incorporate an effective NPA detection approach that authenticates the DAO-ACK packet sent from parent nodes to client nodes. Our proposed approach, SecRPLNPA, has been integrated and thoroughly tested using the Cooja simulator. We have conducted a performance assessment of SecRPLNPA comparing it against standard RPL and ERPL. Our empirical results suggest that in both stationary and mobile scenarios, SecRPLNPA proficiently detects and mitigates Network Partitioning Attacks while causing only minimal impact on resource-constrained nodes.

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Data Availability

Data available on request from the authors.

Abbreviations

OSPF:

Open shortest path first

IETF:

Internet engineering task force

6LoWPAN:

IPv6 over low-power wireless personal area networks

IoT:

Internet of Things

LLN:

Low-power and lossy network

DIS:

DODAG information solicitation

AODV:

Adhoc on-demand distance vector

DODAG:

Destination oriented directed acyclic graph

DAO:

Destination advertisement object

RPL:

Routing protocol for low power and lossy networks

DIO:

DODAG information object

NPA:

Network partitioning attack

ERPL:

Enhanced-RPL

OF:

Objective functions

DAO-ACK:

Destination advertisement object-acknowledgment

MRHOF:

Minimum rank with hysteresis objective function

NS:

Non-storing

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CSE Discipline, PDPM Indian Institute of Information Technology Design & Manufacturing, Dumna Airport Road, Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, 482005, India

    Shefali Goel

  2. Department of Information Technology, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Vidhya Vihar, Raebareli Road, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, 226025, India

    Abhishek Verma

  3. Department of Computer Science & Engineering, ABV-Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Morena Link Road, Gwalior, 474015, India

    Vinod Kumar Jain

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  1. Shefali Goel
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Contributions

Shefali Goel and Abhishek Verma wrote the main manuscript text. Abhishek Verma and Vinod Kumar Jain supervised the implementation. Shefali Goel prepared the figures, graphs. Vinod Kumar Jain proofread the manuscript and revised it critically to include technical content. All authors reviewed and did proofreading.

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Correspondence to Abhishek Verma.

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Goel, S., Verma, A. & Jain, V. Design and Implementation of a Lightweight Mitigation Solution for Addressing Network Partitioning Attack Against RPL Protocol. Wireless Pers Commun 139, 2027–2050 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-024-11704-0

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