Meta-exploitation of IPv6-based WSNs

The growing use of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) to accomplish tasks with strict requirements in terms of secrecy and reliability is increasingly attracting the interest of malicious users, thus incrementing the demand for more secure and dependable WSN implementations. Such necessity is directly reflected in the growing need for tools and techniques to ease the design, assessment and validation of security solutions suited for WSN deployments. Initially, WSNs were mainly considered as stand-alone systems but the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) vision is fostering a deeper integration of WSNs as a part of the Internet, hence promoting holistic approaches and reuse of existing solutions also concerning security. In order to cope with this evolving scenario, this paper proposes a tool to support penetration testing of actual WSN deployments based on 6LoWPAN, considered one of the main building blocks of the IoT paradigm. The feasibility of WSN penetration testing as an approach to tackle IoT security is demonstrated through a practical proof-of-concept developed by extending the well-known Metasploit Framework targeting actual WSN deployments based on 6LoWPAN.