# Clone Node Detection Attacks and Mitigation Mechanisms in Static Wireless Sensor Networks
## 3 Cybersecurity Attacks in Wireless Sensor Networks
### Clone Node Attack (Replication Attack) in Static Wireless Sensor Networks
#### 3.3.2 Clone Node Attack Detection Techniques in Static Wireless Sensor Networks
When a witness node identifies a node as a clone node, other witness nodes might not identify that clone node as such. Therefore, this technique can suffer from either a deterministic selection or a non-identical distribution of the witnesses on the network. Based on this fact, an attacker can attempt to make a replica attack and the malicious nodes go undetected, making this method pointless. In the deterministic selection of witness nodes, an attacker may deploy a _smart attack_ on the network by rendering the witness nodes be guessable. It is strongly required that the witness nodes are protected (secured). [PERSON] et al. introduce the concept of a random-walk-based approach where the witness nodes are randomly chosen by launching several random walks throughout the wireless sensor network. This technique was greatly appreciated but still had some drawbacks, such as noteworthy limitations. For example, by employing a significant detection probability of replica nodes along with security measures and by initiating more random walks, the memory becomes overloaded using this method.Secondly, their approach needs more reporters (witness nodes) to initiate more random walks, which will forward the position claim to randomly picked witness nodes (See again [36]). Distributed Witness Node Based Protocols Requirements  
To ensure the security of witness nodes (usually called reporters), the selection of these witnesses should be non-deterministic as we have stated earlier. Additionally, all the nodes in the wireless sensor network should have a proportionate probability of being witnesses. As a result, it will be much tougher for an attacker to effectively launch replica attacks in a non-deterministic manner since the witness nodes are not known and are not non-identical in each execution of the protocol. Furthermore, the reporters should be uniformly distributed throughout the wireless sensor network. Another point is that they (reporters) should not be chosen over and over from any specific position (location, spot) of the WSN. We have provided the positives and negatives of each of the detection methods (named here in this paper as \"child-class\") from the centralized and distributed techniques, named here as parent-class. In the following section, we provide the summary of this chapter by elaborating on the advantages and drawbacks of a centralized technique, distributed in the WSNs in a general way. Advantages and Drawbacks of Centralized Techniques  
The primary advantages of the centralized methods can be summarized as follows:  
They are operated by a unique central device that knows the entire system and the locations of all the deployed devices. Based on this, the origin of an event is normally known and the data that are to be sent are sent to a specific target, mostly named as a base station. There are generally no conflicts in data transmissions or data reception because the central node administers and harmonizes every node. The routing and the move of every node is easy to compute, and the best path can be selected considering the whole network. These factors \"number of nodes in the network, the distance between nodes, the number of hops, the energy amount of each node\" are of great importance when it comes to computing the optimal nodes' positions and the base station location. In centralized techniques, reconfiguration is easy to implement. Regarding drawbacks, we can group here all the disadvantages already listed in some previous sections for the child-class of the centralized technique. They are mostly:  
Excessive power (energy) consumption. This situation occurs most of the time because every time the nodes have to send something, they have to know to which node (destination) to address their message; and to perform this action, GPS technology is usually used on each node to localize them, which causes a lot of the energy exhaustion.