Wormhole attacks detection and prevention based on 2-hop neighbor in Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are widely used in many areas, such as industrial, commercial and public-safety environments. However, due to the open nature of wireless communication, it is relatively easy for an adversary to launch serious wormhole attack which can't be even prevented by cryptographic protocols. To enhance the efficiency and facility of wormhole detection, we here propose a high efficiency wormhole detection algorithm based on 2-hop neighbor in WMNs, which is called Wormhole Detection based on Neighbor's Neighbor scheme (WDNN). Then a simple Random Walk Route scheme (RWR) is proposed to prevent routes from wormholes, which attract traffic of the routing protocols based on least cost. In WDNN, through enlarging the transmission range of the 2-hop neighbor, the faked network topology resulted by wormholes can be detected without using extra hardware or clock synchronization. In RWR, the route is chosen without using the low latency link which is created by wormholes. Security analysis shows that the wormhole attacks can be detected and also be prevented using our schemes efficiently. And our simulation results also indicate that our schemes can obtain a 100% wormhole detection rate and prevent routes from being attacked by the adversary against traditional routing protocols. 1548-7741/Copyright © 2013 Binary Information Press.