International Journal of Computer Theory and Engineering

Abstract

Wireless networks are suspectible to many attacks, including an attack known as the wormhole attack. The wormhole attack is very powerful, and preventing the attack has proven to be very difficult. A strategic placement of the wormhole can result in a significant breakdown in communication across a wireless network. In such attacks two or more malicious colluding nodes create a higher-level virtual tunnel in the network, which is employed to transport packets between the tunnel endpoints. These tunnels emulate shorter links in the network and so act as benefit to unsuspecting network nodes which by default seek shorter routes. This paper present a novel trust-based scheme for identifying and isolating nodes that create a wormhole in the network without engaging any cryptographic means. With the help of extensive simulations, we demonstrate that our scheme functions effectively in the presence of malicious colluding nodes and does not impose any unnecessary conditions upon the network establishment and operation phase.