# Addressing DAO Insider Attacks in IPv6-Based Low-Power and Lossy Networks

## TL;DR

This paper identifies vulnerabilities in RPL-based LLNs to DAO insider attacks and proposes a lightweight blacklisting defense mechanism that effectively mitigates such attacks, restoring network performance.

## Contribution

It introduces a novel, lightweight defense strategy against DAO insider attacks in IPv6-based LLNs, validated through simulation.

## Key findings

- The attack can significantly degrade network performance.
- The proposed blacklisting method effectively mitigates DAO insider attacks.
- Network performance is restored with the defense mechanism.

## Abstract

Low-Power and Lossy Networks (LLNs) run on resource-constrained devices and play a key role in many Industrial Internet of Things and Cyber-Physical Systems based applications. But, achieving an energy-efficient routing in LLNs is a major challenge nowadays. This challenge is addressed by Routing Protocol for Low-power Lossy Networks (RPL), which is specified in RFC 6550 as a "Proposed Standard" at present. In RPL, a client node uses Destination Advertisement Object (DAO) control messages to pass on the destination information towards the root node. An attacker may exploit the DAO sending mechanism of RPL to perform a DAO Insider attack in LLNs. In this paper, it is shown that an aggressive attacker can drastically degrade the network performance. To address DAO Insider attack, a lightweight defense solution is proposed. The proposed solution uses an early blacklisting strategy to significantly mitigate the attack and restore RPL performance. The proposed solution is implemented and tested on Cooja Simulator.