Lightweight cloned-node detection algorithm for efficiently handling SSDF attacks and facilitating secure spectrum allocation in CWSNs

Cognitive Wireless Sensor Networks (CWSNs) provide better bandwidth utilization when compared with normal wireless sensor networks. CWSNs use a technique called opportunistic spectrum access for data transfer. While doing so, however, CWSNs are subject to several security threats. The spectrum sensing data falsification attack comes under the DoS attack. In this attack, a malicious node sends a modified spectrum sensing report so that the resulting collaborative spectrum sensing decision becomes wrong and a good cognitive sensor node receives a wrong decision regarding the vacant spectrum band of other's network. In the presence of the node cloning attack, the solution of the SSDF attack becomes even more difficult. In the node cloning attack, the malicious node creates many clones of the compromised node in the network. In order to confuse the collaborative spectrum sensing system, the clone nodes can send false spectrum sensing reports in a large number. The maximum-match filtering (MMF) algorithm is used for making a secure spectrum sensing decision in CWSNs. The Cloned-Node Detection (CND) algorithm is proposed here to detect cloned nodes. This study also explains how the CND algorithm assists the MMF algorithm to make better spectrum sensing decisions by avoiding the node cloning attack.