A Review on Security Issues and Attacks in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are networks of tiny sensors that are deployed randomly in various geographic conditions to collect information about the environment. The main function of sensor nodes is to gather the data from the environment and send the assembled data to the base station. Since these nodes are deployed in an unattended environment, they are prone to the security attacks. Security is the main threat for wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we have discussed various security attacks like DoS, Sybil attack, sinkhole, wormhole, Hello flood and selective forwarding attack. The attacks are categorized into two categories viz. goal oriented and layer oriented attacks. Goal oriented attacks are furtherclassified as active and passive attacks. Active attacks are more dangerous whereas passive attacks are passive in nature and do not modify any information. Furthermore, the mechanisms to prevent these attacks are also discussed.