Efficient Attacks in Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

The need for applying WSN in Industrial Control Systems (ICS) leads to the development of the first open standard for wireless communications, WirelessHART, designed for wireless real-time monitoring and control of industrial processes. Sensor networks in ICS require high availability, since the consequences of abusing these systems might result in a catastrophic event. In this paper we analyze the WirelessHART protocol and examine how secure it is in terms of external attacks. We conduct our analysis on the Medium Access Control layer. Results show that systems based on the WirelessHART protocol are easily subjected to external jamming interference, disrupting the real-time communication in the industrial control system. Our main contribution is the proposed algorithm which shows the ability of a malicious sensor node to sniff the network traffic and abuse the learned parameters to disrupt the communication in an efficient manner.