ArsPAN: Attacker Revelation Scheme using Discrete Event System in 6LoWPAN based Buffer Reservation Attack

Abstract

6LoWPAN, an adaptation layer designed by IETF, is meant for IPv6 connectivity over lossy links and low power resource constrained devices using the IEEE 802.15.4 networks. Of late, the growing emergence of Internet of Things (IoT) enabled devices in areas such as industrial Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) and home automation has mobilized extensive implementation of 6LoWPAN. However, absence of authentication mechanisms render the adaptation layer prone to various attacks arising out of duplicated or fabricated fragments. Buffer Reservation Attack targets the vulnerability induced due to fictitious allocation of the butter, which then denies new packets from occupancy till timeout. Existing research works to mitigate such attacks resort to cryptographic solutions and split butter approaches to intelligently guarantee butter reservation. In this paper we propose an attacker revelation scheme using Discrete Event Systems (DES) in the framework of Finite State Machines (FSM). The motivation behind our countermeasure is that no work has addressed identification of the adversary in 6LoWPAN setting before. We detect the attack using Wireshark analytics and identify the malicious node from responses to probe packets using a DES based state estimator which ensures correctness too. Our approach is tested on Contiki OS and experimental results show that the proposed scheme provides energy efficient solutions with lesser response times compared to the state of the art solutions.