Defence against wormhole attacks in wireless mesh networks

Abstract

Wormhole attack is one of the most severe security threats on wireless mesh network. Unfortunately, most of the existing wormhole defence mechanisms are not secure against wormhole attacks while launched in participation mode. In this paper, we propose a wormhole defence mechanism (WDM), which operates in conjunction with any underlying routing protocol to detect the presence of wormhole during route discovery. The mechanism is based on the unit-disk graph model which defines necessary and sufficient condition for a secure path. WDM is resistant against hidden and exposed wormhole attacks, and does not rely on any extra hardware like global positioning system, time or connectivity information. © Springer-Verlag 2012.