Wormhole Detection Using Channel Characteristics

The potential applications and pervasive nature of mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) has made them an attractive target for attackers. The wireless medium of communication coupled with constrained resources enable attacks which can be executed by a weak adversary. A wormhole is one such attack which poses considerable threat, particularly to routing protocols. In this paper, we devise a novel scheme for detecting a wormhole by utilizing the inherent symmetry of electromagnetic wave propagation in the wireless medium. We demonstrate the loss of this symmetry in case of a wormhole attack and propose a method to detect and flag the adversary. We modify the insecure neighborhood discovery to incorporate authentication. We further extend this scheme to a trust system with low overhead.