Detecting IEEE 802.11 MAC layer misbehavior in ad hoc networks: Robust strategies against individual and colluding attackers

Selfish behavior at the Medium Access (MAC) Layer can have devastating side effects on the performance of wireless networks, with effects similar to those of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. In this paper we consider the problem of detection and prevention of node misbehavior at the MAC layer, focusing on the back-off manipulation by selfish nodes. We first propose an algorithm that ensures honest behavior of non-colluding participants. Furthermore, we analyze the problem of colluding selfish nodes, casting the problem within a minimax robust detection framework and providing an optimal detection rule for the worst-case attack scenarios. Finally, we evaluate the performance of single and colluding attackers in terms of detection delay. Although our approach is general and can be used with any probabilistic distributed MAC protocol, we focus our analysis on the IEEE 802.11 MAC.