Impact of Security Attacks on Congestion in Wireless Sensor Networks

Security is an essential factor that must be addressed in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) since they are resource-constraint, may handle sensitive data, and operate in hostile inaccessible regions. The Purpose of security attacks in networks is mainly to breach the confidentiality, authenticity and, integrity of data which consequently raises the energy consumption rate and lessens the network lifetime. Several methods and techniques have been applied by attackers to achieve their goals. However, one of the easiest methods is to prompt congestion which causes packet delay, packet loss, re-transmissions and ultimately jeopardizes the network. Unfortunately, aggravation of network congestion by the faulty behaviour of malicious nodes has not been discussed to great extent in literature. In this paper, we explore and discuss different types of attacks to analyse their impact on congestion occurrence and related problems through simulation in different network scenarios. According to this analysis, different types of attacks could have devastating effects on networks. This demonstrates the need for developers to create more secure WSNs.