An Efficient and Truthful Leader IDS Election Mechanism for MANET

In this paper, we consider the problem of increasing the effectiveness of an intrusion detection system (IDS) for a cluster of nodes in ad hoc networks. To solve such a problem, a head cluster is elected by the nodes to handle the detection service. Current solution elects a leader randomly without considering the energy level of nodes. Such solution is vulnerable to selfish nodes that do not provide IDS service to others while at the same time benefiting from others´ services. From our experiments, selfish nodes reduce the effectiveness of an IDS since less packets are inspected over time. Here, we are modeling a distributed, truthful, and efficient mechanism for electing a leader IDS that handles the detection process in a cluster. Our solution is able to balance the energy among all the nodes and increase the overall lifetime of an IDS in a cluster. In our model, incentives are given in the form of reputation to encourage the nodes to cooperate in the leader election process. The reputation is used to track the cooperative behavior of nodes where miss-behaving nodes are punished by withholding the cluster´s services. Reputations are calculated based on the truth-telling mechanism design known as Vickrey, Clarke, and Groves (VCG). Our analysis prove that truth-telling is the dominant strategy for all the nodes and therefore efficiency is guaranteed. Finally, simulation results show that our mechanism improves the performance of an IDS in analyzing packets and punishes misbehaving nodes.