Vampire Attacks: Draining Life From Wireless Adhoc Sensor Networks

Abstract

Ad hoc less power wireless networks are one of the current topics in the field of security and pervasive computing. Most of the research work done before for improving the security of the networks in this area is mainly limited to the denial of message at the routing level or MAC levels. This project work investigates the attacks done with an aim of resource reduction at the routing protocol layer. These attacks can lead to the quick draining of the nodes battery power there by permanently disable the networks. These resource depletion attacks are called as “Vampire” attacks, which are not particular to any  protocol, instead they depends on the general features of the routing protocols classes. In some of the bad cases, a particular vampire can increases network-wide bandwidth usage in the order of O (N). Present techniques to overcome these attacks were discussed, including one new protocol has been demonstrated which has successfully reduced the affects of the vampires while forwarding the packet as per the simulation results in the testing environment modeled in this work. A public key algorithm named Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) algorithm is also used for more security provision.