HARPAGON: An Energy Management Framework for Attacks in IoT Networks

The Internet of Things (IoT) represents an eclectic paradigm that is still growing in popularity. However, security aspects are a major concern for IoT devices due to their applications and the amount of sensitive data they provide. Simultaneously, the energy constraint in IoT networks remains a significant issue due to their limited resources. To reduce their energy consumption, several IoT protocols have integrated the energy-saving mode which offers four operating modes. On the basis of these four states, we derive an analysis framework, named HARPAGON, allowing an attacker to maximize his attack efficiency and minimize his impact in terms of energy consumption. Indeed, the effectiveness of many attacks depends principally on the state of the attacker and the victim at the same time. HARPAGON with the help of Markov chain theory allows modeling the interaction between the attacker and its victims. In this article, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the framework coupled with a jamming attack by comparing it to other types of jamming attacks. Experimental results reveal HARPAGON combined with a jamming attack drastically reduces the performance of the network, with an impact on the packet error rate (PER), which is around 13% higher than the reactive attack and with a reduced energy budget in respect of the other two well-known “green” jamming attacks.