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A malicious node in the sinkhole attack implementation will be able to attract a legitimate node only if the following conditions are met:

1. Malicious node is within the range of the legitimate node.

2. A DIO message from the Malicious node reaches the legitimate node with the lowest rank than DIO's from other nodes within its range.

For example, let us consider Sensor_4 as the malicious node in the sinkhole attack scenario. The malicious node is made mobile using the Random Walk mobility model with a high velocity. As the node moves it attracts other sensors such as Sensor_6, Sensor_8, at different points of simulation time.

Sensor_5 and Sensor_7 will not get attracted by the malicious node since they are directly within the range of the root node which has the lowest rank.

Sensor_8 initially connects to Sensor_7 as shown in the DODAG visualization below. At this time, the malicious node is out of range from sensor_8, and hence sensor_8 cannot receive the DIO message broadcast by the malicious node, and hence it does not get attracted towards the malicious node sensor_4.

When Sensor_4 is within range of Sensor_8 at a later point of time and also when it broadcasts DIO message at this point of time, Sensor_8 gets attracted towards the malicious node. This is shown below in the DODAG visualization plot.

To conclude, some of the reasons why a malicious node is unable to attract other nodes is:

1. The malicious node is too far away or not within the range of other nodes.

2. The malicious nodes' DIO broadcast is not received by other nodes which are far away.