Battery Depletion Attack Through Packet Injection on IoT Thread Mesh Network

A research demo by Poonam Yadav, Nirdesh Sagathia and Dan Wade
performed in the SYSTRON Lab
based in the Department of Computer Science at the University of York

An overview of this work is also published on the SYSTRON Lab website. It was demonstrated at the 2024 16th International Conference on COMmunication Systems & NETworkS (COMSNETS).

Table of Contents

1. Abstract
2. Poster
3. Paper
4. Demonstrations

Abstract

In the rapidly expanding landscape of Internet of Things (IoT) device manufacturing and deployment, concerns about security have become prominent. This demonstration involves practical attacks on a thread-mesh network within a controlled environment, exploiting vulnerabilities in various components of the Thread network stack. Our attack vectors successfully identified nearby Thread networks and devices by gathering 2-byte Personal Area Network ID (PAN ID) and device frequency information, serving as reconnaissance for potential additional attacks. The focus was on investigating susceptibility to replay attacks and packet injection into thread-mesh networks. Although the experiment attempted to capture thread packets to emulate an authorised sender, the cryptographic encryption and sequence numbers employed for integrity checks resulted in packet rejection by the network. Despite this, our successful injection of packets highlights the potential for battery depletion attacks.

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Poster

View Poster

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Paper

View Paper (Published by IEEE)

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Demonstrations

The following videos show each stage of the attack scenario. View the full YouTube playlist

CMOS battery check

View CMOS Battery Check Demo on YouTube

Devices

View Devices Demo on YouTube

Thread Topology Monitor

View Thread Topology Monitor Demo on YouTube

Network Ping

View Network Ping Demo on YouTube

Network Scanning over 802.15.4

View Network Scanning Demo on YouTube


View Network Scanning Demo (2) on YouTube

Network Sniffer

View Network Sniffer Demo on YouTube

Wireshark Details and MLE

View Wireshark Details and MLE Demo on YouTube

Python Script

View Python Script Demo on YouTube

Attack 1

View First Attack Demo on YouTube

Attack 2

View Second Attack Demo on YouTube

Attack 3

View Third Attack Demo on YouTube

Attack 4

View Fourth Attack Demo on YouTube

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