Wormhole Detection Using Channel Characteristics

Wormhole Detection Using Channel Characteristics

Title : Wormhole Detection Using Channel Characteristics
Authors :
Baras, John S.
Ta, Tuan
Jain, Shalabh

Conference : First IEEE International Workshop on Security and Forensics in Communication Systems (SFCS 2012) pp. 6699-6704
Date: June 10 - June 15, 2012

The potential applications and pervasive nature of mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) has made them an attractive target for attackers. The wireless medium of communication coupled with constrained resources enable attacks which can be executed by a weak adversary. A wormhole is one such attack which poses considerable threat, particularly to routing protocols. In this paper, we devise a novel scheme for detecting a wormhole by utilizing the inherent symmetry of electromagnetic wave propagation in the wireless medium. We demonstrate the loss of this symmetry in case of a wormhole attack and propose a method to detect and flag the adversary. We modify the insecure neighborhood discovery to incorporate authentication. We further extend this scheme to a trust system with low overhead.

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