Securing RPL-Based Networks Against Version Number and Rank Attacks

The increasing reliance on Low-power and Lossy Networks (LLN) in the Internet of Things (IoT) and their vulnerability to various attacks have made their protection necessary. Most of the proposed approaches to protecting such networks neither support scalability nor are lightweight enough to be incorporated into these constrained networks. In this paper, we present a lightweight approach to protecting LLN networks from rank and version number attacks. The proposal relies on light exchanged messages between the network nodes and the root and network nodes themselves. Successive comparison processes are used to detect the attack while two blocking techniques are introduced against malicious nodes. Simulations demonstrated the effectiveness of the approach, outperforming similar approaches such as Sink-Based Intrusion Detection Systems (SBIDS), Secure Routing Protocol (SRPL) for LLN, the Machine-Learning Technique based on K-Nearest Neighbour (MLTKNN), secure trust-aware Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks (SecTrust) and Shield in terms of appropriate parameters, without causing extra charges on the network.