A protocol for data availability in Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks in the presence of insider attacks

In Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs), establishing trust relationships between the nodes in a decentralized fashion has been an important research issue for a long time. If the sender nodes accurately identify the legitimate nodes in the network, a robust routing can be provided while mitigating the effects of malicious nodes. Further, there is always a mutual interaction between a sender and its neighbor nodes during the communication. This mutual interaction can be easily modeled as a game between two or more players (one player being the sender and the rest being the receivers). Regardless of its type (legitimate or malicious), each player attempts to maximize its benefit during the game by choosing an optimal strategy. In this paper, we propose a secure and robust routing scheme in which the interaction between the sender and receiver nodes is modeled using a dynamic Bayesian game model. A repeated game is considered and opinions of a node about the types of other nodes is established using an acknowledgement mechanism from the destination. The proposed method uses the intersection of game theory, trust establishment and coding theory to resist colluding Byzantine (insider) attacks. The scheme guarantees the availability of message as long as a legitimate path exists. Through simulations we will show the efficiency of the scheme with respect to latency, availability and energy consumption in the presence of adversary.