Peer-to-peer Detection of DoS Attacks on City-Scale IoT Mesh Networks

Wireless IoT mesh networks are being widely deployed for use in applications such as operational technology networks in power grids, city-scale surveillance, and monitoring. The benefits of such networks, which may include mission critical communications, can be undermined by an adversary who launches denial-of-service (DoS) attacks on them. In this paper, we present a peer-to-peer approach to detecting and localizing such adversaries by leveraging the topology of the mesh network. In doing so, we make three main contributions. First, we present insights from a preliminary implementation on a standards-based IoT platform used in real smart meter deployments. Second, we propose an optimal choice of peers that can help detect a jammed node, while minimizing the risk that the peers themselves are jammed. Finally, we present a tool to help generate datasets of city-scale IoT mesh topologies for simulation studies.