An Efficient Algorithm for the Detection of Exposed and Hidden Wormhole Attack

MANETs (Mobile Ad Hoc Networks) are slowly integrating into our everyday lives, their most prominent uses are visible in the disaster and war struck areas where physical infrastructure is almost impossible or very hard to build. MANETs like other networks are facing the threat of malicious users and their activities. A number of attacks have been identified but the most severe of them is the wormhole attack which has the ability to succeed even in case of encrypted traffic and secure networks. Once wormhole is launched successfully, the severity increases by the fact that attackers can launch other attacks too. This paper presents a comprehensive algorithm for the detection of exposed as well as hidden wormhole attack while keeping the detection rate to maximum and at the same reducing false alarms. The algorithm does not require any extra hardware, time synchronization or any special type of nodes. The architecture consists of the combination of Routing Table, RTT (Round Trip Time) and RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) for comprehensive detection of wormhole attack. The proposed technique is robust, light weight, has low resource requirements and provides real-time detection against the wormhole attack. Simulation results show that the algorithm is able to provide a higher detection rate, packet delivery ratio, negligible false alarms and is also better in terms of Ease of Implementation, Detection Accuracy/Speed and processing overhead.