On the (im)possibility of denial of service attacks exploiting authentication overhead in WSNs

The cryptographic operations used in security protocols like data security and authentication will always impose a certain overhead on the amount of time required to process received data. Cautious balance must be maintained between the amount of security required in an application and its overhead. Starting from the random jamming/MAC flooding Denial of Service attacks we examine the possibility of mounting an attack that exploits the overhead required to authenticate received packets. The tests show a resilient protocol and a vulnerable one.