EAACK—A Secure Intrusion-Detection System for MANETs

The migration to wireless network from wired network has been a global trend in the past few decades. The mobility and scalability brought by wireless network made it possible in many applications. Among all the contemporary wireless networks, Mobile Ad hoc NETwork (MANET) is one of the most important and unique applications. On the contrary to traditional network architecture, MANET does not require a fixed network infrastructure; every single node works as both a transmitter and a receiver. Nodes communicate directly with each other when they are both within the same communication range. Otherwise, they rely on their neighbors to relay messages. The self-configuring ability of nodes in MANET made it popular among critical mission applications like military use or emergency recovery. However, the open medium and wide distribution of nodes make MANET vulnerable to malicious attackers. In this case, it is crucial to develop efficient intrusion-detection mechanisms to protect MANET from attacks. With the improvements of the technology and cut in hardware costs, we are witnessing a current trend of expanding MANETs into industrial applications. To adjust to such trend, we strongly believe that it is vital to address its potential security issues. In this paper, we propose and implement a new intrusion-detection system named Enhanced Adaptive ACKnowledgment (EAACK) specially designed for MANETs. Compared to contemporary approaches, EAACK demonstrates higher malicious-behavior-detection rates in certain circumstances while does not greatly affect the network performances.