Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Current threats against Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) are becoming more and more sophisticated that prevention solutions based on single attacks are by no means effective. In fact, the current research is missing an understanding of the coordination among attacks and the collaboration among various attackers since that is emerging as the a powerful strategy for malicious nodes. Unlike single and uncoordinated group attacks, coordinated attacks may cause more devastating impacts on wireless environments as they combine efforts of more than one attackers. In ad hoc networks, the identification of malicious activities is hard when one node misbehaves in route formation. If multiple nodes act maliciously, simultaneously, or alternately, the schemes to deal with them will become very slow at most nodes. Previous works have built a foundation for this research proposal. The general objective of this research is to address issues of characterizing, modeling, and defending against coordinated/collaborative attacks in MANETs. This research project is expected to contribute significantly to the advancement of knowledge in ad hoc networks security, by providing methods for classifying and dealing effectively with collaborative attacks, as well as general guidelines to protect ad hoc networks from any miscreant.