A simple, lightweight, and precise algorithm to defend against replica node attacks in mobile wireless networks using neighboring information

Node replication attack (also known as replica attack) is one of the common attacks in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). In this attack, the adversary captures the sensor node(s) and extracts all important information, properties, and functions. Then, it disrupts the network operation by generating several malicious nodes having the same ID(s) as that of the captured node(s). Since the malicious nodes (i.e., replica nodes) have valid keying material, they can intentionally interfere with the network operation. Motivated by this, a three-step mechanism is proposed to detect replica nodes. The proposed mechanism benefits from watchdog nodes and is based on the idea that all nodes in the network (which are identified by their unique IDs) should have the same chance to be met by watchdog nodes. Accordingly, watchdog nodes monitor the network traffic and silently overhear the channel to see if there is any node with an abnormally higher chance of being met. If so, the ID of the node is advertised as the replica node. To evaluate the performance of the proposed mechanism in terms of probability of detecting replica nodes and false detection probability, a comprehensive set of simulations has been carried out using the J-SIM simulator. The simulation results reveal that the proposed mechanism detects almost all replica nodes while the false detection probability is below 0.005%. It outperforms state-of-the-art protocols with imposing ignorable processing and memory overhead.