Attacking Beacon-Enabled 802.15.4 Networks

The IEEE 802.15.4 standard has attracted time-critical applications in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) because of its beaconenabled mode and guaranteed time slots (GTSs). However, the GTS management scheme’s built-in security mechanisms still leave the 802.15.4 MAC vulnerable to attacks. Further, the existing techniques in the literature for securing 802.15.4 either focus on non beacon-enabled mode 802.15.4 or cannot defend against insider attacks for beacon-enabled mode 802.15.4. In this paper we illustrate this by demonstrating attacks on the availability and integrity of a beacon-enabled 802.15.4 sensor network. To confirm the validity of the attacks, we implement the attacks using Tmote Sky Motes for sensor nodes, where the malicious node is deployed as an inside attacker. We show that the malicious node can easily exploit information retrieved from the beacon frames to compromise the integrity and availability of the network. We also discuss possible defense mechanisms against these attacks.