Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) is a low power WAN protocol stack that spans the physical and link layer of the OSI model. It is the leading LPWAN protocol currently in use for various IoT applications. In our project, we analyze various vulnerabilities of the MaC layer of the LoRaWAN protocol. We research the following three vulnerabilities:
1) Join accept vulnerability during Over the Air Activation of an End Device
2) Beaconing procedure of Class B end devices and
3) Downlink routing vulnerability for confirmed message acknowledgment.
Subsequently, we design and implement attacks based on downlink routing and beaconing vulnerabilities in Ns3. We chart the packet delivery rate at each entity in the network while each attack is underway.
Keywords — LoRaWAN, Denial-of-Service, Internet-of-Things, NS-3, Beaconing, Downlink, OTAA
1. LoRa official documentation maintained by Semtech
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2. Evaluation of Encryption and Decryption Data Packet Delivery Performance in Smart Home Design using the LoRaWAN Protocol
A. R. Zain, P. Oktivasari, M. Agustin, A. Kurniawan, F. A. Murad and I. Nurrahman, "Evaluation of Encryption and Decryption Data Packet Delivery Performance in Smart Home Design using the LoRaWAN Protocol," 2022 5th International Conference of Computer and Informatics Engineering (IC2IE), Jakarta, Indonesia, 2022, pp. 241-246, doi: 10.1109/IC2IE56416.2022.9970045.
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3. Hijacking Downlink Path Selection in LoRaWAN
P. Locatelli, P. Spadaccino and F. Cuomo, "Hijacking Downlink Path Selection in LoRaWAN," 2021 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), Madrid, Spain, 2021, pp. 1-6, doi: 10.1109/GLOBECOM46510.2021.9685973.
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4. Protecting end-device from replay attack on LoRaWAN
W. -J. Sung, H. -G. Ahn, J. -B. Kim and S. -G. Choi, "Protecting end-device from replay attack on LoRaWAN," 2018 20th International Conference on Advanced Communication Technology (ICACT), Chuncheon, Korea (South), 2018, pp. 167-171, doi: 10.23919/ICACT.2018.8323684.
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5. Weighted Centroid Localization in Zigbee-based Sensor Networks
J. Blumenthal, R. Grossmann, F. Golatowski and D. Timmermann, "Weighted Centroid Localization in Zigbee-based Sensor Networks," 2007 IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Signal Processing, Alcala de Henares, Spain, 2007, pp. 1-6, doi: 10.1109/WISP.2007.4447528.
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