An approach to mitigating Sybil attack in wireless networks using ZigBee

Various sensors employing ZigBee protocol send environment information to a home gateway. The home gateway manages every devices, sensors and services according to the information. However, if an attacker fabricates the information with malevolent purpose, the system may perform any inadvertent service, which may be harmful to users. Sybil attack is one of serious threats that uses such vulnerability. In this paper, we propose a Sybil attack detection method and its response method to mitigate the effect of the attack in wireless network using ZigBee. The proposed method employs a challenge-response approach. A verifier send a node a request that corresponds to an identity, and the receiver should respond the request properly within threshold time. The performance of the proposed method is reasonable for applying it to the practical networks. This will help the wireless networks using ZigBee to enhance its security.