Energy-efficient link-layer jamming attacks against wireless sensor network MAC protocols

Abstract

A typical wireless sensor node has little protection against radio jamming. The situation becomes worse if energy-efficient jamming can be achieved by exploiting knowledge of the data link layer. Encrypting the packets may help prevent the jammer from taking actions based on the content of the packets, but the temporal arrangement of the packets induced by the nature of the protocol might unravel patterns that the jammer can take advantage of even when the packets are encrypted. By looking at the packet interarrival times in three representative MAC protocols, S-MAC, LMAC and B-MAC, we derive several jamming attacks that allow the jammer to jam S-MAC, LMAC and B-MAC energy-efficiently. The jamming attacks are based on realistic assumptions. The algorithms are described in detail and simulated. The effectiveness and efficiency of the attacks are examined. Careful analysis of other protocols belonging to the respective categories of S-MAC, LMAC and B-MAC reveal that those protocols are, to some extent, also susceptible to our attacks. The result of this investigation provides new insights into the security considerations of MAC protocols.