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

Wormhole attack is a serious security issue in Mobile Ad hoc Network 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 high-speed mobility, variable tunnel lengths, and fake information by malicious nodes. To address those issues, this paper proposes a novel multi-level authentication 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 holder-member 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.