Modeling Network Vulnerabilities
The adversarial models that have migrated from the wired networks to the infrastructureless networks, such as the Dolev-Yao and the Byzantine adversarial model, are known to be insufficient to capture the adversary capabilities and goals. The unsupervised operation of the wireless devices, enables a series of side-channel attacks such as, device tampering (hardware or software), device cloning, physical displacement or removal of nodes, environment alteration, node impersonation, compromise and even collusion among compromised entities. Furthermore, intelligent adversaries are able to adapt their strategies to the attack prevention mechanisms thus, evading timely detection and significantly disrupting the network functionality.
In addition, the cross-layer designs adopted in resource-constrained networks for the purpose of resource efficiency, generate cross-layer network vulnerabilities. Adversaries disrupting protocols at one layer, can significantly impact performance at another layer due to the cross-layer interaction. Securing vital network processes such as neighbor discovery, localization, time synchronization, data aggregation and dissemination, cluster formation and fair access to the common medium, still remain open problems. It is critical that adequate adversarial models that span the space of attacks with respect to the elementary network functions are proposed, before any detection and prevention mechanisms are developed.Furthermore, the environment uncertainty due to mobility or topology change, device malfunction or poor performance of the wireless medium can trigger false alarms that are indistinguishable from attacks. An intelligent adversary can take advantage of the inability to differentiate between network faults and attack and adaptively masquerade its attacks to degrade network performance. Hence, a multimodal approach is required that combines consistency checks based on invariant network and physical properties, such as the network deployment statistics, or the propagation speed of electromagnetic waves.