{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,25]],"date-time":"2026-08-25T15:48:57Z","timestamp":1787672937000,"version":"build-2736575974"},"reference-count":52,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"12","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2022,6,16]],"date-time":"2022-06-16T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1655337600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Recently, the Internet of Things (IoT) has emerged as an important way to connect diverse physical devices to the internet. The IoT paves the way for a slew of new cutting-edge applications. Despite the prospective benefits and many security solutions offered in the literature, the security of IoT networks remains a critical concern, considering the massive amount of data generated and transmitted. The resource-constrained, mobile, and heterogeneous nature of the IoT makes it increasingly challenging to preserve security in routing protocols, such as the routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks (RPL). RPL does not offer good protection against routing attacks, such as rank, Sybil, and sinkhole attacks. Therefore, to augment the security of RPL, this article proposes the energy-efficient multi-mobile agent-based trust framework for RPL (MMTM-RPL). The goal of MMTM-RPL is to mitigate internal attacks in IoT-based wireless sensor networks using fog layer capabilities. MMTM-RPL mitigates rank, Sybil, and sinkhole attacks while minimizing energy and message overheads by 25\u201330% due to the use of mobile agents and dynamic itineraries. MMTM-RPL enhances the security of RPL and improves network lifetime (by 25\u201330% or more) and the detection rate (by 10% or more) compared to state-of-the-art approaches, namely, DCTM-RPL, RBAM-IoT, RPL-MRC, and DSH-RPL.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s22124539","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,6,19]],"date-time":"2022-06-19T21:19:26Z","timestamp":1655673566000},"page":"4539","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":20,"title":["Multi-Mobile Agent Trust Framework for Mitigating Internal Attacks and Augmenting RPL Security"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"22","author":[{"given":"Umer","family":"Farooq","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Cyber Security, National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2894-7891","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Muhammad","family":"Asim","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Cyber Security, National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9754-253X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Noshina","family":"Tariq","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science, Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5166-4873","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Thar","family":"Baker","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science, College of Computing and Informatics, University of Sharjah, Sharjah P.O. Box 27272, United Arab Emirates"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3800-0757","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ali Ismail","family":"Awad","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Information Technology, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain P.O. Box 17551, United Arab Emirates"},{"name":"Department of Computer Science, Electrical and Space Engineering, Lule\u00e5 University of Technology, 97187 Lule\u00e5, Sweden"},{"name":"Faculty of Engineering, Al-Azhar University, Qena P.O. Box 83513, Egypt"},{"name":"Centre for Security, Communications and Network Research, University of Plymouth, Plymouth PL4 8AA, UK"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,6,16]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Tariq, N., Asim, M., Khan, F.A., Baker, T., Khalid, U., and Derhab, A. (2021). 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