Title: Shielding against on-off attack pattern in a MANET through a trust computation scheme leveraging the behavioural consistency

Authors: Shirina Samreen

Addresses: Department of Computer Science, College of Computer and Information Sciences, Majmaah University, Al-Majmaah 11952, Saudi Arabia

Abstract: The evolution of security mechanisms for defending a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is challenged through intelligent strategies employed by the attackers. The current research involves the design of a robust trust management framework (TMF) which protects the network against an attack pattern termed as on-off attack. Each dimension of the attack vector corresponding to packet droppers and dishonest recommenders employing the on-off attack pattern is countered through an individual dimension of the multi-dimensional trust vector termed as forwarding consistency trust and recommendation consistency trust respectively. The efficiency of proposed scheme in reducing the packet loss is analysed through network simulation using NS-2 under different attack scenarios. It is found that incorporation of behavioural consistency in the trust computation plays a very significant role in maintaining the network performance in the presence of on-off attackers by improving the packet delivery fraction from 71% to 85% and the detection ratio from 70% to 95% respectively.

Keywords: mobile ad hoc networks; MANETs; trust management framework; TMF; security attacks; packet droppers; dishonest recommenders; on-off attack pattern; Jousselme distance.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCNDS.2021.116794

International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, 2021 Vol.27 No.2, pp.178 - 213

Received: 25 Nov 2020
Accepted: 31 Jan 2021
Published online: 02 Aug 2021 *

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