Detection of Packet Forwarding Misbehavior in Wireless Network

Wireless networks are susceptible to having their effective operation compromised by a variety of security attacks. Nodes may misbehave either because they are malicious and deliberately wish to disrupt the network, or because they are selfish and wish to conserve their own limited resources such as power, or for other reasons. The wireless nature and inherent features of mobile ad hoc networks makes them vulnerable to a wide variety of attacks by misbehaving nodes. Such attacks range from passive eavesdropping, where a node tries to obtain unauthorized access to data destined for another node, to active interference where malicious nodes hinder network performance by not obeying globally acceptable rules. For instance, a node can behave maliciously by not forwarding packets on behalf of other peer nodes. This paper presents a mechanism that enables the detection of nodes that exhibit packet forwarding misbehavior.