A Lightweight Security Solution for Mitigation of Hatchetman Attack in RPL-based 6LoWPAN

In recent times, the Internet of Things (IoT) has a significant rise in industries, and we live in the era of Industry 4.0, where each device is connected to the Internet from small to big. These devices are Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled and are capable of perspective analytics. By 2023, it’s anticipated that over 14 billion smart devices will be available on the Internet. These applications operate in a wireless environment where memory, power, and other resource limitations apply to the nodes. In addition, the conventional routing method is ineffective in networks with limited resource devices, lossy links, and slow data rates. Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks (RPL), a new routing protocol for such networks, was proposed by the IETF’s ROLL group. RPL operates in two modes: Storing and Non-Storing. In Storing mode, each node have the information to reach to other node. In Non-Storing mode, the routing information lies with the root node only. The attacker may exploit the Non-Storing feature of the RPL. When the root node transmits User Datagram Protocol (UDP) or control message packet to the child nodes, the routing information is stored in the extended header of the IPv6 packet. The attacker may modify the address from the source routing header which leads to Denial of Service (DoS) attack. This attack is RPL specific which is known as Hatchetman attack. This paper shows significant degradation in terms of network performance when an attacker exploits this feature. We also propose a lightweight mitigation of Hatchetman attack using game theoretic approach to detect the Hatchetman attack in IoT.