Using received signal strength indicator to detect node replacement and replication attacks in wireless sensor networks

With the advent of powerful and efficient wireless sensor nodes, the usage of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has been greatly increased. However, various kinds of security breaches have also been introduced, which exposes the vulnerability of these nodes to defend the valuable data from some specific types of attacks. In this paper, we address node replication, replacement, and man-in-the-middle attacks. We analyze the feasibility of using received signal strength indicator (RSSI) values measured at the receiver node to detect these kinds of attacks. As RSSI value is readily available for every message received by a node, a successful utilization of this information in security breach detection can be a very important contribution.