Identification and Simulation of a Denial-of-Sleep Attack on Open Metering System

We identify a vulnerability of the Open Metering System (OMS) protocol that can be used to run a Denial-of-Sleep attack against it, which is a special type of Denial-of-Service attack on battery-driven devices. In order to analyze the impact of both the normal usage and the attack, we first provide a simulation model that covers the typical characteristics of a battery usage. Then we describe the necessary attacker model. The vulnerability is caused by the fact that an interactive key exchange is used which can be mistreated to keep the device away from sleep mode. Finally, we discuss the impact of the attack and a robust solution.