The Replication Attack in Wireless Sensor Networks: Analysis and Defenses

Security is important for many sensor network applications. Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are often deployed in hostile environments, where an adversary can physically capture some of the nodes. Once a node is captured, adversary collects all the credentials like keys and identity etc. The attacker can re-program it and replicate the node in order to eavesdrop the transmitted messages or compromise the functionality of the network. Identity theft leads to two types attack: clone and Sybil. In particularly a harmful attack against sensor networks where one or more node(s) illegitimately claims an identity as replicas is known as the Node Replication attack. The replication attack can be exceedingly injurious to many important functions of the sensor network such as routing, resource allocation, misbehavior detection, etc. This paper analyzes the threat posed by the replication attack, several novel techniques to detect and defend against the replication attack, and analyzes their effectiveness.