Rank attack using objective function in RPL for low power and lossy networks

The Routing Protocol for Low power and lossy network (RPL) is recommended by Internet Engineering Task force (IETF) for IPv6 based Low Power Personal Area Network (6LoWPAN). RPL is a proactive routing protocol for Internet of Things (IoT) that has applications in smart homes, smart cities and smart world. RPL creates a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) of the network topology. Rank in a primitive construct in RPL and it defines the relative position of node within the DAG. It is used for topology formation, maintenance and prevention of loops in routing paths. Few internal attacks are identified in existing literatures which maliciously use the rank property within RPL networks. In this paper, we introduce a new rank attack in RPL networks that modifies Objective Function (OF) along with rank value. The OF is used by RPL nodes to select forwarding nodes based on application defined routing metric e. g., expected transmission count, residual energy etc. The proposed rank attack is more distractive in nature because the attacking node can easily force its neighboring nodes to route their data through the attacking node. Comprehensive simulation analysis has shown that the proposed rank attack can be used to introduce false routing path for decreasing network throughput and increasing latency of communication.