Preventing Wormhole Attacks on Wireless Ad Hoc Networks: A Graph Theoretic Approach

Abstract

We study the problem of characterizing the wormhole attack, an attack that can be mounted on a wide range of wireless network protocols without compromising any cryptographic quantity or network node. Making use of geometric random graphs induced by the communication range constraint of the nodes, we present the necessary and sufficient conditions for detecting and defending against wormholes. Using our theory, we also present a defense mechanism based on local broadcast keys. We believe our work is the first one to present analytical calculation of the probabilities of detection. We also present simulation results to illustrate our theory.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2005
Accession Number
ADA458934

Entities

People

  • C. Meadows
  • L. W. Chang
  • Loukas Lazos
  • P. Syverson
  • R. Poovendran

Organizations

  • University of Washington

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Ad Hoc Networks
  • Authentication
  • Communication Channels
  • Cryptography
  • Detection
  • Information Operations
  • Mesh Networks
  • Network Protocols
  • Network Topology
  • Networks
  • Probability
  • Routing Protocols
  • Security
  • Sensor Networks
  • Statistical Sampling
  • Statistics
  • Test And Evaluation

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computer Networking
  • Operations Research