Filtering False Messages En-Route in Wireless Multi-Hop Networks

Lightweight en-route authentication is a challenging task in wireless multi-hop networks. Without efficient defense mechanism, an adversary can inject false data into the system, incurring redundant message forwarding, consuming node power, and degrading network performance. Unlike conventional approaches directly using message authentication codes (MAC), we utilize Bloom filter techniques to build an authentication manifest, which is called en-route authentication bitmap (EAB). EAB helps nodes on the routing path to filter out false data in high success rate, thus confine the injection attacks within the one or two hops from the adversary. EAB can spend a few bytes of bandwidth, whereas effectively protect the forwarding path of tens of hops. Our scheme is suitable for resource-constrained networks like WSN, PAN, MANET, etc.