When the Network of a Smart City Is Not So Smart

In this paper we show that a simple repeated (ON- OFF) jamming attack on a wireless distance vector protocol can have a global effect on the network and be as harmful as a sophisticated Network layer attack. This attack takes advantage of the nodes' limited awareness of topological changes when distance vector routing is used. To present the attack in a specific context, we consider the new RPL protocol, which plays an important role in the context of Smart City and Smart Utility networks. We describe the RPL approach to recover from link failures and show that this protocol is susceptible to the proposed attack. We also present a remedy technique and show that it can significantly alleviate the impact of the proposed attack.