Lightweight Distributed Sybil Detection and Whitewashing Mitigation in MANETs Using Mobility Correlation
—Characteristics of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs), such as decentralized architecture, shared communication medium, and node mobility, make them vulnerable to a variety of security threats. Sybil attack is one of the most challenging threats in which a malicious node pretends to be multiple distinct nodes to gain disproportionate resources and disrupt network functionalities. Several traditional solutions have been proposed in the literature, but they are either extensive in resource consumption or inadequate for the MANET context. This paper introduces a distributed lightweight method that exploits Sybil identities’ mobility correlation to detect the attack. It disseminates detection results using a lightweight hashing function. In addition, it uses a probation period to mitigate whitewashing attempts. Simulations using the INET framework under the OMNeT++ simulator, and an independent cross-validation under NS-3, reveal high detection accuracy up to 99.79% with a false positive rate of 0%. Our method can operate as a standalone solution or be integrated into existing routing protocols or IDSs.