Intrusion detection in MANETS - the second wall of defense

Wireless mobile ad hoc networks (popularly known as MANETs) have been the focus of research in recent times. Rapid and infrastructure-less deployment in emergency and military situations make these networks unique. However, certain inherently vulnerable characteristics lead to security concerns, which can prove especially damaging in sensitive situations like military operations. Intrusion prevention measures are not guaranteed to work all the time since unrelenting attackers can eventually break them down. An intrusion detection scheme (IDS) monitors a network and looks for intrusions, thus forming a second wall of defense. In this paper, we have proposed a misuse detection -based IDS for MANETs. Our protocol-independent design makes use of a self-adjusting threshold scheme and detects a priori known attack patterns with over 90% accuracy and is generally insensitive to false alarms. Experimental validation has provided significant results about non-degradability of network performance with our IDS incorporated for security enhancements.