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3 Rank Attack Scenario
Rank attack is one of well known attacks against the routing protocol for low
power and lossy networks (RPL) protocol in the network layer of the Internet of
Things. The rank in RPL protocol as shown in Fig. 2 is the physical position of
the node with respect to the border router and neighbor nodes [12].
Fig. 2. The rank in IoT network.
Since our network is dynamic due to the mobility of its nodes (sensor moving
with patient...), the RPL protocol periodically reformulates the DODAG. As
shown in Fig. 3, an attacker may insert a malicious mote into the network to
attract other nodes to establish routes through it by advertising false ranks
while the reformulation of the DODAG is done [14].
Fig. 3. Rank attack.
By default, RPL has the security mechanisms to mitigate the external attacks
but it can not mitigate the internal attacks efficiently. In that case, the rank