Graph-based wormhole attack detection in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs)

Abstract

A Mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a set of nodes that communicate together in a cooperative way using the wireless medium, and without any central administration. Due to its inherent open nature and the lack of infrastructure, security is a complicated issue compared to other networks. That is, these networks are vulnerable to a a wide range of attacks at different network layers. At the network level, malicious nodes can perform several attacks ranging from passive eavesdropping to active interfering. Wormhole is an example of severe attack that has attracted much attention recently. It involves the redirection of traffic between two end-nodes through a Wormhole tunnel, and manipulates the routing algorithm to give illusion that nodes located far from each other are neighbors. To handle with this issue, we propose a novel detection model to allow a node to check whether a presumed shortest path contains a Wormhole tunnel or not. Our approach is based on the fact that the Wormhole tunnel reduces significantly the length of the paths passing through it.