An efficient countermeasure to the selective forwarding attack in wireless sensor networks

The selective forwarding attack is a serious threat in wireless sensor networks, especially in monitor systems. Malicious sensor nodes work like normal sensor nodes but selectively drop sensitive packets in selective forwarding attack. The dropped packets may contain some crucial information; hence, the loss of some packets may destroy the entire networks. In this paper, we first describe the existing scheme for defending against this attack. We show that the existing scheme has some drawbacks. Second, we utilize a multi-dataflow topologies (MDT) scheme to defend against this attack. Using the MDT scheme for defending against this attack has several advantages. The great benefit of it is that the base station can still receive the information on time even some packets have been dropped; therefore, it is more suitable in monitor systems.