Hammer and anvil: The threat of a cross-layer jamming-aided data control attack in multihop wireless networks

This paper considers potential risks to data security in multi-hop infrastructureless wireless networks where cross-layer routing protocols are used. We show that an adversary, as long as it controls a few of the nodes, and with the help of a few assisting jammers, can extend control over a significant portion of the data in the network even with very simple strategies and limited resources, by creating a so-called “wormhole” even without off-band links. We refer to this jamming-assisted data control threat as hammer and anvil attack. We model a prototype of the hammer and anvil attack in a wireless sensor network scenario with distributed cross-layer routing protocols. We show through extensive performance evaluation that the attack poses a serious threat to the resulting data security, and we provide observations that can be helpful in fine-tuning the attack, as well as in designing defense mechanisms against it.