Here you will find several attacks on wireless network as well as some possible way of prevention and also some applications.

1. SECURITY ISSUES AND ATTACKS
IN WIRELESS SENSOR
NETWORKS
MD.WARESUL ISLAM,

2. OVERVIEW
 What is WSN?
 Applications
 Wireless sensor network characteristics
 DoS attacks and defenses
 Physical layer
 Link layer
 Network layer
 Transport layer
 Application layer
 Conclusion
 Questions

3. WHAT IS WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK ?
 Is a collection of sensor nodes with
limited processor and limited
memory unit embedded in it.
 Sensor nodes are small, low-cost,
low-power devices that have
following functionality:
 communicate on short distances
 sense environmental data
 perform limited data processing

4. WSN APPLICATIONS
 Military Applications
 Battlefield surveillance, Targeting
 Nuclear, biological, and chemical attack detection
 Environmental Applications
 Forest fire & flood detection
 Air & water pollution
 Health Applications
 Tracking and monitoring doctors and patients inside a hospital
 Drug administration in hospitals
 Other Commercial Applications
 Interactive museums
 Home and office automation
 Detecting and monitoring car thefts

5. WSN CHARACTERISTICS
 Weaknesses of WSNs
 Limited processing capability and memory
 Inability to secure wireless medium
 Sensors are vulnerable to physical tampering
 Face attackers who aren’t limited by resources
 Limited and often non-replenishable power supplies

6. DENIAL OF SERVICE (DOS)
 DoS attacks target service availability
 Problematic for many network types
 Prevents communication between devices
 Disables a targeted device

7. ATTACKS AND DEFENSES
 We restrict the Open System Interconnect model down to 4
layers from 7
 Physical layer
 Link layer
 Network layer
 Transport layer
 Analyze each for attacks and potential defenses

8. PHYSICAL LAYER ATTACKS
 Jamming - primary physical attack
 Constant: high power, random noise
 Deceptive: high power, sends byte traffic
 Random: low power, sleeps to save energy
 Reactive: low power, jams in response to traffic
 Problem: simple radios have limited spectrum
 Cannot use classic spread-spectrum technique
 Defense: detect and sleep
 Secondary defense: detect and reroute

9. PHYSICAL LAYER ATTACKS CONT.
 Tampering
 Physical attack on the node itself
 Problem: nodes often deployed in unsecured areas
 No way to prevent for sure, defenses include:
 Camouflage
 Tamper-proof packaging
 Redundant nodes
 Tamper reaction (fire safe)

10. LINK LAYER ATTACKS
 Attack MAC protocols operating the link layer
 Collision: identical to jamming
 Interrogation: constantly request-to-send
 Packet replay: record legitimate traffic and replay
 Problem:
 Very susceptible to DoS because MAC controls power-hungry
radio HW
 Reduces battery life by orders of magnitude

11. LINK LAYER DEFENSES
 Link-layer authentication
 Ensure communication with trusted parties
 Problem: replaying trusted communication
 Antireplay support
 Ensure packets are only sent and received once
 Problem: checking for replays still uses energy

12. NETWORK LAYER ATTACKS
 Hello flood attack
 Nodes send “hello” to one-hop network
 Attacker replays “hello” with high power
antenna, creates false one-hop network
 Doesn’t require encryption breaking
 Defense: Pairwise authentication, geographic
routing (both very expensive)

13. NETWORK LAYER ATTACKS CONT.
 Selective forwarding
 Multi hop paradigm is prevalent in WSN
 It is assumed that nodes faithfully forward received
messages
 Compromised node might refuse to forward packets,
however neighbors might start using another route
 More dangerous: compromised node forwards selected
packets
 Defense: detection of malicious node , another route is chosen
for transmission , data is transmitted on multiple paths .

14. NETWORK LAYER ATTACKS CONT.
 Sinkhole attack
 Become part of many routes, drop all
packets
 Enable other attacks, e.g., selective
forwarding or wormhole attack
 Defense: authentication, antireplay.

15. NETWORK LAYER ATTACKS CONT.
 Wormhole attack
 Two colluding nodes
 A node at one end of the wormhole
advertises high quality link to the
base station
 Another node at the other end
receives the attracted packets
 Defense :using geographic based routing
malicious node will be detected

16. NETWORK LAYER ATTACKS CONT.
 Sybil attack:
 Idea: a single node pretends to be present in different parts
of the network.
 Mostly affects geographical routing protocols
 Defense: Verification of nodes , using hash function each node is
assigned with unique key.

17. TRANSPORT LAYER
 Flooding attack
 Open many connections to overflow state buffer
 Defense: SYN cookies (client maintains state)
 Desynchronization attack
 Sends bogus sequence numbers or controls flags
 Defense: authentication

18. CONCLUSIONS
 WSN is used in different types of applications due to
tremendous growth .
 WSN security is challenging, new area of research.
 #Problems >> #Solutions