Intrusion Detection in the RPL-connected 6LoWPAN Networks

The interconnectivity of 6LoWPAN networks with the Internet raises serious security concerns, as constrained 6LoWPAN devices are accessible anywhere from the untrusted global Internet. Also, 6LoWPAN devices are mostly deployed in unattended environments, hence easy to capture and clone. Despite that state of the art crypto solutions provide information security, IPv6 enabled smart objects are vulnerable to attacks from outside and inside 6LoWPAN networks that are aimed to disrupt networks. This paper attempts to identify intrusions aimed to disrupt the Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL).In order to improve the security within 6LoWPAN networks, we extend SVELTE, an intrusion detection system for the Internet of Things, with an intrusion detection module that uses the ETX (Expected Transmissions) metric. In RPL, ETX is a link reliability metric and monitoring the ETX value can prevent an intruder from actively engaging 6LoWPAN nodes in malicious activities. We also propose geographic hints to identify malicious nodes that conduct attacks against ETX-based networks. We implement these extensions in the Contiki OS and evaluate them using the Cooja simulator.