A novel scheme based on coarse‐grained localization and fine‐grained isolation for defending against Sybil attack in low power and lossy networks

Abstract

AbstractDue to the lack of security mechanisms and sensor resources, the IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low power and Lossy networks (RPL) is vulnerable to various attacks, among which Sybil attack has received a lot of attention. This paper proposes a novel scheme based on coarse‐grained localization and fine‐grained isolation (CLFI) for defending Sybil attack. In CLFI, normal neighbor nodes are identified based on received signal strength indicator (RSSI). To further identify Sybil nodes, a physical address identifier called is defined, which is calculated as the difference of RSSI at two different receivers when they are receiving the same packet. In order to facilitate the calculation of , a set of anchor nodes are deployed to broadcast the received RPL control packets. Then Sybil behaviors can be detected by comparing the physical address identifier with the logical address embedded in the received packets. The proposed CLFI scheme has been completely implemented in the Contiki operating system. The extensive evaluation in comparison with the state‐of‐the‐art scheme indicates that CLFI can quickly localize and isolate Sybil nodes.