Performance and Security Impacts of Blackhole Attacks on RPL-based IoT Networks for IoMT Applications

Blackhole attacks stance a substantial menace to Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL)- based Internet of Things (IoT) networks. This study investigates the impact of such attacks on key performance metrics, including power consumption and Directed Acyclic Graph Identification Object (DIO) packet delivery. Using the Contiki and Cooja simulators, we analyze the effects of scenario-based blackhole attacks under various conditions. Our findings show that blackhole attacks lead to significant increases in CPU and radio energy consumption, with CPU utilization rising by 15-20% and radio listen energy increasing by 20-25%, while idle power consumption remains unchanged. These results highlight network vulnerabilities and inform the design of more resilient, trust-centric IoT networks, particularly for critical applications like remote healthcare monitoring.