Title: How network coding system constrains packet pollution attacks in wireless sensor networks

Authors: Yuanyuan Zhang; Marine Minier

Addresses: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China ' CITI Laboratory, INSA de Lyon (Institut National des Sciences Appliquées), 69621 Villeurbanne Cedex, France

Abstract: Packet pollution attack is considered as the most threatening attack model against network coding-based sensor networks. A widely held belief says that, in a single source multi-destination dissemination scenario, the total number of polluted packets in the network will grow with the length of the transmission path and the decoding failure (DF) rate at the further destination nodes are relatively lower. In this work, we first obtain an opposite result by analysing the pollution attack in multicast scenarios, and find out a convergence trend of pollution attack by network coding system, and quantify the network resiliency against the pollution attacks which happen at any place along the source-destination paths. Then, the analysis result is proved by our simulations on two most widely deployed buffer strategies, Random-In Random-Out (RIRO) and First-in First-Out (FIFO). Finally, it is proved that RIRO has a much advanced security feature than FIFO in constraining the pollution attack gradually, and almost vanished in the end.

Keywords: packet pollution attacks; buffer strategy; network coding security; wireless sensor networks; WSNs; wireless networks; network security.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGUC.2013.056256

International Journal of Grid and Utility Computing, 2013 Vol.4 No.2/3, pp.197 - 203

Received: 19 Aug 2012
Accepted: 23 Sep 2012
Published online: 18 Sep 2014 *

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