A Vampire Act of Sybil Attack on the Highest Node Degree Clustering in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Objective: This paper aims at analyzing the devastating effect of Sybil attack in Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) that use the Highest Node Degree based Clustering scheme for routing. Method/Analysis: A Sybil attack can disrupt the highest node degree based clustering scheme in MANETs by impersonating the identity of a legitimate node. An attacker will put all its efforts in forcibly electing its prey node as the leader of a cluster. In making its mission successful, an attacker uses a number of ghost identities to interact with the prey node, and hence increasing the connectivity of that prey node. It can achieve this by allowing its multiple Sybil nodes to communicate directly with a legitimate prey node. In other words, all the Sybil nodes contribute to increase the node degree of a particular prey node, so as to make it a cluster head. The Sybil attack can play the same trick on the same prey node in every cluster formation process by following the direction and movement the prey node. After making this prey node as a cluster head the multiple Sybil nodes can start sucking its battery by communicating with the bogus messages. Once the battery of the prey node is drained completely, the Sybil attacker can impersonate its identity to further disrupt the network system. Findings: We have used Java language to simulate the vampire act of Sybil attack in MANETs. All the results obtained from the experiments prove that a Sybil attack succeeded with high probability, in forcibly re-electing the same prey node as a leader of the cluster. Novelty: The vampire act of Sybil attack on the maximum connectivity based clustering is shown for the first time in this paper.