Detection of selective forwarding attack in wireless ad hoc networks using binary search

Selective forwarding attack is one of the most harmful attacks in wireless networks. This paper proposes an algorithm to defend against selective forwarding attacks based on binary search technique in clustered wireless ad hoc network. In the first phase, the cluster head raises an alarm when number of packets dropped along a path is more than a threshold value. In the second phase, control packets and hello packets are exchanged along a misbehaving routing path between the wireless node and a cluster head to detect compromised node. Experimental results demonstrate that the detection efficiency of the proposed algorithm is more than 90%. The algorithm can detect multiple compromised nodes if they exist. We have also experimented to estimate the threshold value of packet drops and computed the required rate of drops of compromised nodes so that they can be detected.