MLAMAN: a novel multi-level authentication model and protocol for preventing wormhole attack in mobile ad hoc network

Abstract

Wormhole attack is a serious security issue in Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) where malicious nodes may distort the network topology and obtain valuable information. Many solutions, based on round trip time, packet traversal time, or hop-count, have been proposed to detect wormholes. However, these solutions were only partially successful in dealing with node highspeed mobility, variable tunnel lengths, and fake information by malicious nodes. To address those issues, this paper proposes a novel multi-level authentication (MLA) model and protocol (MLAMAN) for detecting and preventing wormhole attacks reliably. MLAMAN allows all intermediate nodes to authenticate control packets on a hop-by-hop basis and at three levels: 1) the packet level where the integrity of the packets can be verified, 2) the node membership level where a public key holdermember can be certified, and 3) the neighborhood level where the neighborhood relationship between nodes can be determined. The novelty of the model is that it prevents malicious nodes from joining the network under false information and pretense. It detects wormhole nodes effectively under various scenarios including variable tunnel lengths and speeds of moving nodes. The effectiveness of our approach is confirmed by simulation results through various scenarios.

Prevention of Attacks in Mobile Ad Hoc Network using African Buffalo Monitoring Zone Protocol

“…These prevention approaches are based on packet traversal time, round trip time, & hop-count but, these solutions are not successful. To avoid these issues, Vo et al [18] introduced a multi-level authentication method and procedure (MLAMAN). This method permitted the nodes to validate the packets based on 3 steps that are packet level, membership, and neighborhood level.…”

CREDND: A Novel Secure Neighbor Discovery Algorithm for Wormhole Attack

“…Sookhak et al [24] presented an approach where malicious nodes were detected based on identifying the best reliable neighbors using the pairwise key pre-distribution technique. Vo et al [25] described a novel multi-level authentication model and protocol (MLAMAN) which allows all intermediate nodes to authenticate control packets on a hopby-hop basis and at three levels. It is quite well known that cryptographic-based schemes consume higher energy in order to process the computationally complex cryptography for securing routing protocol [26], [27].…”

“…Therefore, a technique that can find wormhole-free routes in the network is required. Some proposed solutions depended on cryptographic techniques [24], [25], but they consume higher energy for computationally complex cryptography [26], [27]. Some wormhole preventive approaches are based on geographical location which needs equipping with GPS [28], directional antennas [29] or mobile beacon [30], incur high cost and communication overhead in WSNs.…”

Detection and prevention of black-hole and wormhole attacks in wireless sensor network using optimized LSTM

“…Therefore, from the existing literature, the researchers reviewed the detection approaches of conventional attacks and significant analytics and security data collection in WSN. The node characteristics are resource-limited and self-governed; however, WSNs (Gandham Swetha et al , 2019) have significant threats because of various attacks, between wormhole attacks (Vo et al , 2018). Furthermore, in WSNs, the wormhole attacks have more risks and this is complex for detection of attacks and this causes inaccurate routing using private tunnels and damages to WSNs that are related to delayed delivery, data dropping and data leakage (Hu et al , 2006; Maidamwar and Nekita, 2012).…”