Detecting and locating wormhole attacks in wireless ad hoc networks through statistical analysis of multi-path

The application of multi-path techniques in wireless ad hoc networks is advantageous because multi-path routing provides means to combat the effect of unreliable wireless links and constantly changing network topology. The performance of multi-path routing under wormhole attack is studied in both cluster and uniform network topologies. Because multi-path routing is vulnerable to wormhole attacks, a scheme called statistical analysis of multi-path (SAM) is proposed to detect such attacks and to identify malicious nodes. As the name suggests, SAM detects wormhole attacks and identifies attackers by statistically analyzing the information collected by multi-path routing. Neither additional security services or systems nor security enhancement of routing protocols is needed in the proposed scheme. Simulation results demonstrate that SAM successfully detects wormhole attacks and locates the malicious nodes in networks with cluster and uniform topologies and with different node transmission range.