Sequential Hypothesis Testing Based Approach for Replica Cluster Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks, replica node attacks are very dangerous because the attacker can compromise a single node and generate as many replicas of the compromised node as he wants, and then exploit these replicas to disrupt the normal operations of sensor networks. Several schemes have been proposed to detect replica node attacks in sensor networks. Although these schemes are capable of detecting replicas that are widely spread in the network, they will likely fail to detect replica cluster attacks in which replicas form a cluster in a small region. These attacks are also harmful because the attacker can leverage a replica cluster to harmfully impact on the much of the network. To defend against replica cluster attacks, we propose an efficient and effective replica cluster detection scheme using the Sequential Hypothesis Testing. We evaluate our proposed scheme through analysis and simulation. The evaluation results demonstrate that it accomplishes robust replica cluster detection capability.