End-to-end protocol to secure ad hoc networks against wormhole attacks

Most of the protocols to defend ad hoc networks against wormhole attacks rely on 'trust your neighbor' relationship. In this paper, we present an end-to-end algorithm which is more efficient than the existing algorithm both in terms of space and time. As our algorithm does not require speed and time, we do not need clock synchronization. We prove that our algorithm is able to detect wormholes with tunnel length greater than or equal to [{(2p - 1)/2p} k + 2/p]r(max), where p = r(max)/r(min), r(min) is the minimum communication range, r(max) is the maximum communication range between any two nodes, and k is path length in terms of the number of hop-counts. However, with the help of simulations we show that we are able to detect wormholes even when tunnel length is much less than [{(2p - 1)/2p} k + 2/p] r(max). We also studied the effect of error in the positions of the node on the wormhole detection capability. In the absence of any error in the location, there are no false alarms and in the presence of error the effect on detection capability is negligible. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.