Detection of exhaustion attacks over IEEE 802.15.4 MAC layer using fuzzy logic system

Detection mechanism against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks is a critical component of any security system as these attacks can affect the availability of a node or an entire network. In this work, we focus the exhaustion attacks in IEEE 802.15.4 low rate wireless personal area network (LR-WPAN) MAC layer. This type of attack not only blocks the ongoing communication in the network, but also causes the wireless nodes to exhaust their energy much earlier than expected. A significant number of malicious attacks against the security in wireless networks have been identified in recent times. Considering the untrusted environments of operations of such networks, the threat of DDoS attacks against constrained sensory resources i.e. sensor power, computation and communication capabilities cannot be overlooked. To increase the reliability of attack detection, it is necessary to provide enhanced detection mechanisms that can determine the actual cause of channel impact. To address this, we designed a fuzzy logic system to detection of exhaustion attacks in IEEE 802.1.5.4 MAC layer. It is an attack detection mechanism which uses an anomaly based approach and operates in a distributed manner and we can distinguish attack scenarios from the impact of traffic load on network behavior. Simulation results provide evidence the effectiveness for achieving detection of exhaustion attacks with improved detection rate.