Credibility based secure route finding in wireless ad hoc networks

Existing Ad Hoc routing protocols are mostly based on efficiency-driven protocols. Malicious nodes can easily impair the performance of wireless ad hoc networks as a result of different actions such as packet dropping or black hole attacks without being detected. It is virtually impossible to find out these kinds of malicious before they attack, therefore it would be sensible to base detection of malicious nodes on post route discovery stage, i.e. when packets are transmitted on discovered routes. In this paper we shall review existing techniques for secure routing and propose to use credibility based route finding protocols. Each node would monitor its neighbors' pattern of delivering packets and regularly update their "credibility" according to certain criteria. The level of trust in any route will be based on the credits associated with the neighbor belonging to the discovered route. We shall evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme by modifying our simulation system so that each node has a dynamic changing "credit list" for its neighbors' behavior. We shall conduct a series of simulations with and without the proposed scheme and compare the results. We will demonstrate that the proposed mechanism is capable of isolating malicious nodes and thereby counteracting black hole attacks. We will discuss problems we encountered and our solutions. We would also further develop the protocol, to investigate the possibility of using the unique prime factorization theory to enable nodes acquiring more trust knowledge beyond its immediate neighborhood. Such an approach helps to further secure route-finding procedures