Clone Node Detection Attacks and Mitigation Mechanisms in Static Wireless Sensor Networks

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The main contribution that is claimed is the proposed ontology-based approach.  This appears on page 15 of the manuscript.  The steps outlined in the approach appear a bit straightforward.  Moreover, some of them are already common practice (for example, physical security via security gates and continual monitoring).  The strength of the contribution is not readily evident.  Also, much of the manuscript seemed to focus on outlining the context, background, and problem, while the ontological solution spans a small, one-page portion of the manuscript.

The number of sections seemed a bit excessive.  For a 22-page manuscript, twelve (12) sections is too large.  Please consider consolidating a few intermediate sections.  For example, sections 3, 4, and 5 could be combined into one section.

Typographical and grammatical issues need to be corrected.  Below are some examples.

Page 1, Abstract line 2: "has been tremendously gotten more and more attention" --> "has been gaining a significantly increasing amount of attention"

Page 1, Abstract line 13: "think up of a detection protocol" --> "invent a detection protocol"

Page 1, Abstract line 15: "embrace" --> "examine"

Page 1, Abstract line 17: Expand the acronym "ORASWSN" before use

Page 1, Introduction line 23: The phrase "phenomena from their exact neighbors" is unclear. Please consider rewording.

Page 1, Introduction line 27: The phrase "(HMI) support ModBus Remote Terminal Unit" is unclear and imprecise. I assume you mean "(HMI) supporting ModBus Remote Terminal Unit".  Please consider rewording for clarifying the intended relation between HMI and RTU.  However, I do not think it should be restricted by the specific protocol -- in this case you mention ModBus.  Since this is a general discussion, I am not sure why ModBus is specifically identified.  I think you can safely drop the word "ModBus" from the sentence.  If not, it should be qualified that the paper is specific to ModBus protocol only.

Page 1, Introduction line 29: "faulty, reliable" --> "faulty and unreliable"

Page 1, Introduction line 30: "internet" --> "Internet"

Page 1, Introduction line 30: "opened" --> "open"

Page 1, Introduction line 30: "Usually, a typical sensor" --> "A typical sensor"

Page 1, Introduction line 32: Unclear what is meant by "highly needed" -- please reword.

Page 1, Introduction line 35: Unclear what is meant by "for future use".

Page 1, Introduction line 35: Unclear what is meant by "monitor industries" -- perhaps you mean "surveillance and monitoring applications"?

And so on -- there are may language-related issues that would need to be resolved.

Author Response

Answer for Reviewer 1:
Yes, we mentioned them (physical security, gates, etc), even if they are already common practice, because the replication attack occurred if and only if the attacker has physical access to the network. Therefore, we did not want to keep quiet on them.
b) As we have already published a lot of information about ontology in our previous article, we found that it was okay to just refer the readers to that version in this article. However, to make it simple and more compact, we elaborate more on the ontology now in this paper.

2) We consider the sections issues, and fix that.
3) We also corrected all the typographical and grammatical issues mentioned, and in all the paper a supervision was made and we corrected the issues found.
Page 1, Abstract line 2: "has been tremendously...". - Fixed 
Page 1, Abstract line 13: "think up of a detec...". - Fixed
Page 1, Abstract line 15: "embrace" - Fixed
Page 1, Abstract line 17: - Fixed
Page 1, Introduction line 23: The phrase "phenomena..." - Fixed

4) Page 1, Introduction line 27: - Fixed
Page 1, Introduction line 29 - Fixed
Page 1, Introduction line 30 - Fixed
Page 1, Introduction line 35 - Fixed.
Gather data for future use i,e after the sensors gather the information of the environment in which they were deployed (temperature, humidity, pressure for example), these information will be used for future purpose (for instance, meteorological purpose). 

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is overall written in a very verbose and fuzzy manner with too many buzz words rather than clear contribution and fundamental theoretical background. The authors mix together too many notions that are catchy words nowadays, such as cybersecurity, Wireless sensor network, clone node detection, node replication attack, mitigation of clone attacks, IoT, etc. without really dealing with all those buzzwords in their analysis. Also, the paper lacks a theoretical background, as none of the proposed methods are new or proposed by the authors, rather than they already exist in the literature. Moreover, including information on techniques that are widely known or can easily be extracted from literature. This makes the paper tedious, while there is very little useful information. In general, the paper is too long with a very general discussion and without practically explaining what is the real problem that the authors address, what is its practical meaning, and where it can be applied.

In addition, the framework design methodology should be explicitly indicated, highlighting its primary/secondary goals, requirements/assumptions, limitations, null/alternative hypothesis of the research, etc.

Overall, a very poorly written paper and proposed research. The authors should rewrite the manuscript via showing at the beginning which are their contributions, what is the research gap that they try to fill, what has already been done in the literature and justify why the proposed research is novel and where it can be applied. Also, they must re-arrange the entire paper and improve a lot the background in order to make the paper self-consistent. They must insert a state of the art, in particular, to explain where the original contribution of the work is. Furthermore, I suggest giving more details about the considered architecture and about the application of the proposed method to it. None of those questions is currently addressed in the manuscript.

Finally, my main concern is that this research work is not a good fit for the topics and the scientific standing of this journal.

Author Response

Answer for 2nd Reviewer:
1st paragraph    of critics - Fixed
2nd paragraph of critics - Fixed
3rd paragraph of critics - Fixed
4th paragraph of critics (appeared as the reviewer's view). Answer: We had this topic suggested by a MDPI reviewer in our first article titled (Ontology for XSS attacks) of journal "cybersecurity & privacy". That is why we submit this article in this journal.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

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