Timestamp Scheme to Mitigate Replay Attacks in Secure ZigBee Networks

ZigBee is one of the communication protocols used in the Internet of Things (IoT) applications. In typical deployment scenarios involving low-cost and low-power IoT devices, many communication features are disabled, consequently affecting the security offered by ZigBee. The ZigBee specification assumes that deployment of frame counters is sufficient to mitigate replay attacks in secure ZigBee networks. However, we demonstrate that it is insufficient in this paper (i.e., the network is no longer secure after the coordinator restarts). As a countermeasure, we present a timestamp-based scheme to mitigate replay attacks. Our mitigation strategy does not consume power significantly, and fully powered devices will be responsible for providing power-constrained devices with the current timestamp. The proposed scheme is designed for all ZigBee topologies and different states of ZigBee End Devices (ZEDs). Findings from our evaluation show that the proposed scheme can successfully mitigate replay attacks, with no significant network performance degradation even assuming a worst-case scenario (i.e., many devices are sending data simultaneously).