Routing Attacks and Mitigation Methods for RPL-Based Internet of Things

The recent bloom of Internet of Things (IoT) and its prevalence in many security-sensitive environments made the security of these networks a crucial requirement. Routing in many of IoT networks has been performed using the routing protocol for low power and lossy networks (RPL), due to its energy-efficient mechanisms, secure modes availability, and its adaptivity to work in various environments; hence, RPL security has been the focus of many researchers. This paper presents a comprehensive study of RPL, its known attacks, and the mitigation methods proposed to counter these attacks. We conducted a detailed review of the RPL standard, including a recently proposed modification. Also, we investigated all recently published attacks on RPL and their mitigation methods through the literature. Based on this investigation, and to the best of our knowledge, we introduced a first-of-its-kind classification scheme for the mitigation methods that is based on the techniques used for the mitigation. Furthermore, we thoroughly discussed RPL-based intrusion detection systems (IDSs) and their classifications, highlighting the most recently proposed IDSs.