An Efficient and Lightweight Intrusion Detection System for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

AbstractThe distinctive aspects of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs), including dynamic network topology, susceptible wireless medium, and limited battery power are highly vulnerable to various types of invasion. The traditional Intrusion Detection System (IDS) prevents the network from intruders using observation-based techniques and security algorithms. However, the limited battery power and network overhead is still a major issue to design an IDS. This paper proposes a Distributed and Cooperative Lightweight Intrusion Detection (DCLID) system to discern and eradicate the intruders from the network. The proposed system includes local detection engine, local analyzer, and trust management system. A local detection engine continuously monitors the network activity and stores the monitoring data in a table. A local analyzer examines the monitoring data periodically to evaluate a threshold based on network traffic and network connectivity. An extra field is added to a routing protocol to store the observed data for threshold measurement. The DCLID system is a lightweight system, it only turns on when the attack happens in the network and the network lifetime is high owing to lightweight designing. The threshold value measurement is used to trigger the IDS for detecting the intruders based on trust estimation. It estimates the trustworthiness of a node using Dempster–Shafer (DS) evidence theory. The DS theory provides a mathematical way to merge the observed data from different observers for deciding trustworthiness of an intruder. The simulation results demonstrate the efficacy of the DCLID system.KeywordsMANETLightweight intrusion detection systemNetwork layer attacksTrust managementDempster–Shafer theoryFirst keywordSecond keywordThird keyword