Preventing DoS attack in sensor networks: a game theoretic approach

In order to isolate malicious nodes in wireless sensor and actor networks and provide a secure routing, we formulate the attack-defense problem as a two-player, nonzero-sum, non-cooperative game between an attacker and a wireless sensor and actor network. We show that this game achieves Nash equilibrium and thus leads to a defense strategy for the network. We propose two novel schemes for preventing denial of service attack. The first approach is called utility based dynamic source routing (UDSR). It incorporates the total utility of each route in data packets, where utility is a value that we are trying to maximize in the game theoretic approach. The second approach is based on a watch-list, where each node earns a rating from its neighbors, based on its previous cooperation in the network. Results show that the proposed game frameworks significantly increase the chance of success in defense strategy for the wireless sensor and actor networks.