WAPN： a distributed wormhole attack detection approach for wireless sensor networks

• Published in: Journal of Zhejiang University. A. Science 2009-02, Vol.10 (2), p.279-289
• Main Authors: Kong, Fan-rui, Li, Chun-wen, Ding, Qing-qing, Cui, Guang-zhao, Cui, Bing-yi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Civil Engineering; Classical and Continuum Physics; Engineering; Industrial Chemistry/Chemical Engineering; Mechanical Engineering; 安全防护; 无线个域网; 无线传感器网络; 虫洞攻击检测
• ISSN: 1673-565X; 1862-1775
• DOI: 10.1631/jzus.A0820178

As the applications of wireless sensor networks （WSNs） diversify, providing secure communication is emerging as a critical requirement. In this paper, we investigate the detection of wormhole attack, a serious security issue for WSNs. Wormhole attack is difficult to detect and prevent, as it can work without compromising sensor nodes or breaching the encryption key. We present a wormhole attack detection approach based on the probability distribution of the neighboring-node-number, WAPN, which helps the sensor nodes to judge distributively whether a wormhole attack is taking place and whether they are in the influencing area of the attack. WAPN can be easily implemented in resource-constrained WSNs without any additional requirements such as node localization, tight synchronization, or directional antennas. WAPN uses the neighboring-node-number as the judging criterion, since a wormhole usually results in a significant increase of the neighboring-node-number due to the extra attacking link. Firstly, we model the distribution of the neighboring-node-number in the form of a Bernoulli distribution. Then the model is simplified to meet the sensor nodes＇ constraints in computing and memory capacity. Finally, we propose a simple method to obtain the threshold number, which is used to detect the existence of a wormhole, Simulation results show that WAPN is effective under the conditions of different network topologies and wormhole parameters.