Design and implementation of an algorithm against sinkhole atack in wireless sensor networks

Recently, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been found wide real world application areas. As they are usually deployed in hostile environments, WSNs are sensitive in terms of security. In particular, for military and medical WSNs that carry security sensitive data, it is more important to provide data privacy and integrity. Studies show that, due to limited resources of these networks, traditional security mechanisms cannot solve security problems. More importantly, because of the unique characteristics of WSNs, security mechanisms should be developed during system design phase. In WSNs, there are many attacks that do not exist in traditional networks, such as sinkhole. In this study two defense mechanisms have been proposed for sinkhole attack prevention and one of those methods has been implemented. Implemented security mechanism is based on the analysis of data flow within the network. Malicious sinkhole nodes are determined through the ?votes? of neighboring sensor nodes. Sinkhole attack and proposed defense mechanism against the attack have been simulated and tested using NS-2 simulator. The simulation results show that the proposed defense mechanism decreases the number of lost packets due to sinkhole attack at a rate of 83.6%.