Performance evaluation of rank attack impact on routing protocol in low-power and lossy networks

Abstract

The internet of things (IoT) is a network of connected devices, enabling the exchange and collection of data from various environments. The routing protocol for low power and lossy networks (RPL) is a protocol for routing IPv6 over low-power wireless personal area networks, commonly used in IoT applications. However, RPL has several security and privacy issues that make it vulnerable to various attacks, including rank attacks (RA), which can lead to denial-of-service (DoS) scenarios. This research aims to address the impact of RA on RPL networks by conducting simulations using the Contiki/Cooja simulator with two topology types, random and grid, along with three RA scenarios and a normal network scenario. The study compares the performance of RPL network OF0 and MRHOF in terms of throughput, packet delivery ratio (PDR), hop count (HC) and delay. The results demonstrate that RA significantly degrades network performance and reduces network lifetime, thus draining its limited resources. Some possible solutions are also suggested to mitigate these attacks by focusing on core components of the network like objective function (OF) and node behavior. Future work will focus on studying security mechanisms for RPL against RA.