Hierarchical Cooperative Intrusion Detection Method for MANETs (HCIDM)

In the recent years, mobile ad hoc wireless networks (MANETs) have experienced a tremendous rise in popularity and usage due to their flexibility and ability to provide connectivity from anywhere at any time. In general, MANETs provide mobile communication to participating nodes in situation where nodes do not need access to an existing network infrastructure. MANETs have a network topology that changes over time due to lack of infrastructure and mobility of nodes. Detection of a malicious node in MANETs is hard to achieve due to the dynamic nature of the relationships between moving node and the nature of the wireless channel. Most traditional Intrusion Detection System (IDS) are designed to operate in a centralized manner; and do not operate properly in MANET because data in MANETs is distributed in different network devices. In this paper, we present an Hierarchical Cooperative Intrusion Detection Method (HCIDM) to secure packets routing in MANETs. HCIDM is a distributed intrusion detection mechanism that uses collaboration between nodes to detect active attacks against the routing table of a mobile ad hoc network. HCIDM reduces the effectiveness of the attack by informing other nodes about the existence of a malicious node to keep the performance of the network within an acceptable level. The novelty of the mechanism lies in the way the responsibility to protect the networks is distributed among nodes, the trust level is computed and the information about the presence of a malicious is communicated to potential victim. HCIDM is coded using the Network Simulator (NS-2) in an ad hoc on demand distance vector enable MANET during a black hole attack. It is found that the HCIDM works efficiently in comparison with an existing Collaborative Clustering Intrusion Detection Mechanism (CCIDM), in terms of delivery ratio, delay and throughput.