Abstract:
Security is a key challenge for any IIoT network and more so for constrained IWSN deployments.
Novel methods are thus required to enhance security, taking into consideration the lossy and low power
nature of the IWSN. The use of ICMP packets is proposed as a method to generate fingerprinting
information for IWSN devices. The ICMP based method uses the round-trip time information in the
ICMP header as a fingerprinting metric. The results showed that the effect of the physical layer can be
averaged out of the measurement if enough samples are available. A linear relationship was found
between hop count and round-trip time for a static network which can be used in the design phase of the
IWSN network or alternatively as a method to fingerprint routing anomalies in real-time. The ICMP
method was able to differentiate between devices from different vendors, but unable to fingerprint
devices from the same vendor due to physical layer interference. The work shows that fingerprinting
in an IWSN using the ICMP method is possible if the timing delta under investigation is an order
of magnitude larger than the timing variation introduced by the physical layer while maintaining a
reasonable signal-to-noise ratio.
