About SenSys
The pervasive interconnection of autonomous sensor devices has given birth to a broad class of exciting new applications. At the same time, however, the unattended nature and the limited resources of sensor nodes have created an equal number of vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit in order to gain access in the network and the information transferred within. While much work has been done on trying to defend these networks, little has been done on suggesting sophisticated tools for proving how vulnerable sensor networks are. This work demonstrates a tool that allows both passive monitoring of transactional data in sensor networks, such as message rate, mote frequency, message routing, etc., but also discharge of various attacks against them.
SenSys is the first instance of an attack tool that can be used by an adversary to penetrate the confidentiality of a sensor network. Not only can it identify common applied protocols and a sensor network's functionality by analyzing overheard radio messages but it can also use this information to perform attacks such as Sinkhole attack, Replay attack, or Injecting malicious code in order to take control over the network. Also, it can extract useful network information such as node crashes, reboots, routing problems, network partitions, and traffic analysis (overall network traffic or overheard traffic by each sensor node).
Results show that our tool can be flexibly applied to different sensor network operating systems and protocol stacks giving an adversary privileges to which she is not entitled to.
SenSys Team
Dimitriou Tassos (“tdim[AT]ait.edu.gr”)
Athens Information Technology, 2011,