Combating Intra-Region DoS Attacks in Delay Tolerant Networks using Energy-Efficient Mechanisms

Denial of Service (DoS) attacks have been amajor threat in the Internet and in other emerging networks including DelayTolerant Networks (DTNs). A DTN is characterized by limited bandwidth, longqueuing delays, low data rate, low power and intermittent connectivity. Most ofthe proposed DoS mitigation schemes for wired and wireless networks are highlyinteractive requiring several protocol rounds. They are also resourceconsuming, complex and assume intermittent connectivity. These features makethe applicability of proposed schemes unsuitable in a DTN scenario. An attackercan exploit the DTN message forwarding mechanism to inject fake bundles intothe network. The attacker’s overall objective is to deplete node and linkresources such as CPU processing cycles, battery power, memory and bandwidth.In this paper, we propose a proactive DoS-Resilient Authentication Mechanism(DoSRAM). The proposed mechanism uses three message authenticator variantscalled DTN-Cookies to minimize computational and communication costs. Theproposed mechanism has been verified through simulations using theOpportunistic Network Environment (ONE) simulator. Results show that DoSRAMoutperforms solutions which are based on RSA-Digital Signatures in terms ofthroughput, energy and bandwidth efficiency. DoSRAM can accurately detect andfilter out DoS traffic