WoLiVe: Wormhole detection through link verification in wireless networks with error-prone channel

Wormhole in a wireless network is a “virtual” link that tunnels packets between two locations which are typically separated by a long distance. A malicious wormhole operates without the knowledge of the actual sender and the receiver and exposes the in-transit packets to various risks including eavesdropping, modification and destruction. In this paper we present a novel protocol called WoLiVe (acronym for Wormhole detection through Link Verification) that detects wormholes by verifying if a packet traveling over a wireless link is taking significantly more time than it is supposed to take. More specifically, a node interested to verify if the link to its neighbor is a wormhole sends out a challenge nonce to the neighbor. The neighbor must reply to it with a response nonce within a fixed timeout period. The neighbor must also authenticate itself to the sender. However, in a network with error-prone channel, a nonce could be corrupted by ambient noise thus disrupting the intended verification procedure. Hence we use error-correcting codes, more specifically Reed-Solomon code, to build noise-resilience through forward error correction in the nonce-exchange procedure. The solution is integrated with IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol, making it a feasible idea for currently available wireless systems. Security analysis of the protocol shows it is highly immune to various forms of wormhole attacks.