MOBIWORP: Mitigation of the wormhole attack in mobile multihop wireless networks

Issa Khalil, Saurabh Bagchi, Ness B. Shroff

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

35 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In multihop wireless systems, the need for cooperation among nodes to relay each other's packets exposes them to a wide range of security attacks. A particularly devastating attack is the wormhole attack, where a malicious node records control traffic at one location and tunnels it to a colluding node, possibly far away, which replays it locally. This can have an adverse effect on route establishment by preventing nodes from discovering legitimate routes that are more than two hops away. Previous works on tolerating wormhole attacks have focused only on detection and used specialized hardware, such as directional antennas or extremely accurate clocks. More recent work has addressed the problem of locally isolating the malicious nodes. However, all of this work has been done in the context of static networks due to the difficulty of secure neighbor verification with mobile nodes. The existing work on secure neighbor verification has limitations in accuracy, resource requirements, and applicability to ad-hoc and sensor networks. In this paper, we present a countermeasure for the wormhole attack, called MOBIWORP, which alleviates these drawbacks and efficiently mitigates the wormhole attack in mobile networks. MOBIWorp uses a secure central authority (CA) for global tracking of node positions. Local monitoring is used to detect and isolate malicious nodes locally. Additionally, when sufficient suspicion builds up at the CA, it enforces a global isolation of the malicious node from the whole network. The effect of MOBIWORP on the data traffic and the fidelity of detection is brought out through extensive simulation using ns-2.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2006 Securecomm and Workshops
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2006
Externally publishedYes
Event2006 Securecomm and Workshops - Baltimore, MD, United States
Duration: Aug 28 2006Sept 1 2006

Publication series

Name2006 Securecomm and Workshops

Other

Other2006 Securecomm and Workshops
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityBaltimore, MD
Period8/28/069/1/06

Keywords

  • Mobile ad-hoc networks
  • Neighbor watch
  • Node isolation
  • Secure neighbor discovery
  • Wormhole attack

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Communication

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