A novel approach for the fast detection of black holes in mobile ad hoc networks

Mobile ad hoc networks are infrastructure-less wireless networks that rely on node cooperation to properly work. In this kind of networks, attack detection and reaction is a key issue to the whole network. The most common threat in mobile ad hoc network scenarios consists in the presence of a certain percentage of selfish nodes, which try to reduce the consumption of their own resources to prolong their battery lifetime. Those nodes do not collaborate on forwarding activities, therefore affecting the overall network performance. Watchdogs are well-known mechanisms to detect threats and attacks from misbehaved and selfish nodes in computer networks. The problem behind the use of watchdogs is that while they can be quite effective in detecting selfishness by using their traffic overhearing behaviour, they can also cause a relatively high level of false negatives, thereby reducing their accuracy. This article proposes a collaborative approach for detecting selfish nodes in mobile ad hoc networks. It is based on using a set of collaborative watchdogs, which collaborate to enhance their individual and collective performance. By using both an analytical study and simulation, we demonstrate that our approach is able to improve accuracy and detection speed, while reducing the impact of false-negative eventsThis work was partially supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion, Spain, under grant TIN2011-27543-C03-01.Serrat Olmos, MD.; Hernández Orallo, E.; Cano Escribá, JC.; Tavares De Araujo Cesariny Calafate, CM.; Manzoni, P. (2013). A novel approach for the fast detection of black holes in mobile ad hoc networks. Concurrent Engineering: Research and Applications. 21(3):177-185. https://doi.org/10.1177/1063293X13493448S177185213Buchegger, S., & Le Boudec, J.-Y. (2005). Self-policing mobile ad hoc networks by reputation systems. IEEE Communications Magazine, 43(7), 101-107. doi:10.1109/mcom.2005.1470831Buttyán, L., & Hubaux, J.-P. (2003). Mobile Networks and Applications, 8(5), 579-592. doi:10.1023/a:1025146013151Groenevelt, R., Nain, P., & Koole, G. (2005). The message delay in mobile ad hoc networks. Performance Evaluation, 62(1-4), 210-228. doi:10.1016/j.peva.2005.07.018Hortelano, J., Calafate, C. T., Cano, J. C., de Leoni, M., Manzoni, P., & Mecella, M. (2010). Black-Hole Attacks in P2P Mobile Networks Discovered through Bayesian Filters. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 543-552. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-16961-8_77Li, Y., Su, G., Wu, D. O., Jin, D., Su, L., & Zeng, L. (2011). The Impact of Node Selfishness on Multicasting in Delay Tolerant Networks. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 60(5), 2224-2238. doi:10.1109/tvt.2011.2149552Marti, S., Giuli, T. J., Lai, K., & Baker, M. (2000). Mitigating routing misbehavior in mobile ad hoc networks. Proceedings of the 6th annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking - MobiCom ’00. doi:10.1145/345910.345955T.V.P, S., & A, S. (2010). Modeling the Behavior of Selfish Forwarding Nodes to Stimulate Cooperation in MANET. International journal of Network Security & Its Applications, 2(2), 147-160. doi:10.5121/ijnsa.2010.2212Xu, L., Lin, Z., & Ye, A. (2006). Analysis and Countermeasure of Selfish Node Problem in Mobile Ad Hoc Network. 2006 10th International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design. doi:10.1109/cscwd.2006.253072Zhong, S., Chen, J., & Yang, Y. R. (s. f.). Sprite: a simple, cheat-proof, credit-based system for mobile ad-hoc networks. IEEE INFOCOM 2003. Twenty-second Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37428). doi:10.1109/infcom.2003.1209220Zhu, H., Fu, L., Xue, G., Zhu, Y., Li, M., & Ni, L. M. (2010). Recognizing Exponential Inter-Contact Time in VANETs. 2010 Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM. doi:10.1109/infcom.2010.546226

Recommendation based trust model with an effective defence scheme for MANETs

YesThe reliability of delivering packets through multi-hop intermediate nodes is a significant issue in the mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). The distributed mobile nodes establish connections to form the MANET, which may include selfish and misbehaving nodes. Recommendation based trust management has been proposed in the literature as a mechanism to filter out the misbehaving nodes while searching for a packet delivery route. However, building a trust model that relies on the recommendations from other nodes in the network is vulnerable to the possible dishonest behaviour, such as bad-mouthing, ballot-stuffing, and collusion, of the recommending nodes. . This paper investigates the problems of attacks posed by misbehaving nodes while propagating recommendations in the existing trust models. We propose a recommendation based trust model with a defence scheme that utilises clustering technique to dynamically filter attacks related to dishonest recommendations within certain time based on number of interactions, compatibility of information and node closeness. The model is empirically tested in several mobile and disconnected topologies in which nodes experience changes in their neighbourhoods and consequently face frequent route changes. The empirical analysis demonstrates robustness and accuracy of the trust model in a dynamic MANET environment

A Dynamic Reputation Management System for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (cc BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Nodes in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are mandated to utilize their limited energy resources in forwarding routing control and data packets for other nodes. Since a MANET lacks a centralized administration and control, a node may decide to act selfishly, either by refusing to respond to route requests from other nodes or deceitfully by responding to some route requests, but dropping the corresponding data packets that are presented for forwarding. A significant increase in the presence of these misbehaving nodes in a MANET can subsequently degrade network performance. In this paper, we propose a dynamic reputation management system for detecting and isolating misbehaving nodes in MANETs. Our model employs a novel direct monitoring technique to evaluate the reputation of a node in the network, which ensures that nodes that expend their energy in transmitting data and routing control packets for others are allowed to carry out their network activities while the misbehaving nodes are detected and isolated from the network. Simulation results show that our model is effective at curbing and mitigating the effects of misbehaving nodes in the networkPeer reviewedFinal Published versio

Secure Routing and Medium Access Protocols inWireless Multi-hop Networks

While the rapid proliferation of mobile devices along with the tremendous growth of various applications using wireless multi-hop networks have significantly facilitate our human life, securing and ensuring high quality services of these networks are still a primary concern. In particular, anomalous protocol operation in wireless multi-hop networks has recently received considerable attention in the research community. These relevant security issues are fundamentally different from those of wireline networks due to the special characteristics of wireless multi-hop networks, such as the limited energy resources and the lack of centralized control. These issues are extremely hard to cope with due to the absence of trust relationships between the nodes. To enhance security in wireless multi-hop networks, this dissertation addresses both MAC and routing layers misbehaviors issues, with main focuses on thwarting black hole attack in proactive routing protocols like OLSR, and greedy behavior in IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol. Our contributions are briefly summarized as follows. As for black hole attack, we analyze two types of attack scenarios: one is launched at routing layer, and the other is cross layer. We then provide comprehensive analysis on the consequences of this attack and propose effective countermeasures. As for MAC layer misbehavior, we particularly study the adaptive greedy behavior in the context of Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) and propose FLSAC (Fuzzy Logic based scheme to Struggle against Adaptive Cheaters) to cope with it. A new characterization of the greedy behavior in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) is also introduced. Finally, we design a new backoff scheme to quickly detect the greedy nodes that do not comply with IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol, together with a reaction scheme that encourages the greedy nodes to become honest rather than punishing them

Secure Routing and Medium Access Protocols inWireless Multi-hop Networks

While the rapid proliferation of mobile devices along with the tremendous growth of various applications using wireless multi-hop networks have significantly facilitate our human life, securing and ensuring high quality services of these networks are still a primary concern. In particular, anomalous protocol operation in wireless multi-hop networks has recently received considerable attention in the research community. These relevant security issues are fundamentally different from those of wireline networks due to the special characteristics of wireless multi-hop networks, such as the limited energy resources and the lack of centralized control. These issues are extremely hard to cope with due to the absence of trust relationships between the nodes. To enhance security in wireless multi-hop networks, this dissertation addresses both MAC and routing layers misbehaviors issues, with main focuses on thwarting black hole attack in proactive routing protocols like OLSR, and greedy behavior in IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol. Our contributions are briefly summarized as follows. As for black hole attack, we analyze two types of attack scenarios: one is launched at routing layer, and the other is cross layer. We then provide comprehensive analysis on the consequences of this attack and propose effective countermeasures. As for MAC layer misbehavior, we particularly study the adaptive greedy behavior in the context of Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) and propose FLSAC (Fuzzy Logic based scheme to Struggle against Adaptive Cheaters) to cope with it. A new characterization of the greedy behavior in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) is also introduced. Finally, we design a new backoff scheme to quickly detect the greedy nodes that do not comply with IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol, together with a reaction scheme that encourages the greedy nodes to become honest rather than punishing them

A collaborative trust management scheme for emergency communication using delay tolerant networks

Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) comprises of nodes with small and limited resources including power and memory capacity. We propose the use of DTN as an alternate means of communication for the dissemination of emergency information in a post-disaster evacuation operation. We investigate the performance of DTN in providing emergency communication support services under packet dropping attacks. We consider internally motivated attacks where the nodes that are part of the emergency rescue team are compromised with malicious behaviours thereby dropping packets to disrupt the message dissemination during the evacuation operation. A way to mitigating malicious behaviour and improve network performance of DTN is to use incentives in exchanging information between nodes. Unlike existing schemes, we consider the Basic Watchdog Detection System which detects and acts against misbehaving nodes to reduce their overall impact on the network performance. We design a Collaborative Trust Management Scheme (CTMS) which is based on the Bayesian detection watchdog approach to detect selfish and malicious behaviour in DTN nodes. We have evaluated our proposed CTMS through extensive simulations and compared our results with the other existing schemes. Our evaluations show that the use of adequate collaborative strategies between well behaved nodes could improve the performance of Watchdog schemes taking into account the delivery ratio, routing cost and the message delay from the source node to the destination node

A collaborative trust management scheme for emergency communication using delay tolerant networks

Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) comprises of nodes with small and limited resources including power and memory capacity. We propose the use of DTN as an alternate means of communication for the dissemination of emergency information in a post-disaster evacuation operation. We investigate the performance of DTN in providing emergency communication support services under packet dropping attacks. We consider internally motivated attacks where the nodes that are part of the emergency rescue team are compromised with malicious behaviours thereby dropping packets to disrupt the message dissemination during the evacuation operation. A way to mitigating malicious behaviour and improve network performance of DTN is to use incentives in exchanging information between nodes. Unlike existing schemes, we consider the Basic Watchdog Detection System which detects and acts against misbehaving nodes to reduce their overall impact on the network performance. We design a Collaborative Trust Management Scheme (CTMS) which is based on the Bayesian detection watchdog approach to detect selfish and malicious behaviour in DTN nodes. We have evaluated our proposed CTMS through extensive simulations and compared our results with the other existing schemes. Our evaluations show that the use of adequate collaborative strategies between well behaved nodes could improve the performance of Watchdog schemes taking into account the delivery ratio, routing cost and the message delay from the source node to the destination node

Trust Computational Models for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks. Recommendation Based Trustworthiness Evaluation using Multidimensional Metrics to Secure Routing Protocol in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks.

Distributed systems like e-commerce and e-market places, peer-to-peer networks, social networks, and mobile ad hoc networks require cooperation among the participating entities to guarantee the formation and sustained existence of network services. The reliability of interactions among anonymous entities is a significant issue in such environments. The distributed entities establish connections to interact with others, which may include selfish and misbehaving entities and result in bad experiences. Therefore, trustworthiness evaluation using trust management techniques has become a significant issue in securing these environments to allow entities decide on the reliability and trustworthiness of other entities, besides it helps coping with defection problems and stimulating entities to cooperate. Recent models on evaluating trustworthiness in distributed systems have heavily focused on assessing trustworthiness of entities and isolate misbehaviours based on single trust metrics. Less effort has been put on the investigation of the subjective nature and differences in the way trustworthiness is perceived to produce a composite multidimensional trust metrics to overcome the limitation of considering single trust metric. In the light of this context, this thesis concerns the evaluation of entities’ trustworthiness by the design and investigation of trust metrics that are computed using multiple properties of trust and considering environment. Based on the concept of probabilistic theory of trust management technique, this thesis models trust systems and designs cooperation techniques to evaluate trustworthiness in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). A recommendation based trust model with multi-parameters filtering algorithm, and multidimensional metric based on social and QoS trust model are proposed to secure MANETs. Effectiveness of each of these models in evaluating trustworthiness and discovering misbehaving nodes prior to interactions, as well as their influence on the network performance has been investigated. The results of investigating both the trustworthiness evaluation and the network performance are promising.Ministry of Higher Education in Libya and the Libyan Cultural Attaché bureau in Londo