Optimized Multi-Metric Method and Packet Hiding Method (OM3-PHM) for Detection and Prevention of Jamming Attacks

Overcrowding attack is one of the most harmful attacks and it is utilized as a launch pad for creating Denial-of-Service affect in the wireless environment. Usually, overcrowding attack is considered as an external hazard model. But the internal adversaries have more knowledge about the network secret materials and protocol descriptions that can initiate the trouble-free jamming attack that is highly complex to notice and prevent. In this research, the problem of selective overcrowding attack is addressed. In the selective overcrowding attacks, the attackers are active at a particular time and selectively attack the messages which one has high significance. In this work, Optimized Multi-Metric method and Packet Hiding method (OM3-PHM) is introduced for detection and prevention of overcrowding attacks in wireless networks. In this method, the multi-metrics such as Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), signal force and pulse depth of the signal for detecting the overcrowding attacks. The average overcrowding pulse is observed in a time windowpane and compare with threshold value to detect the overcrowding attacks. To decrease the false alarm rate, the optimal threshold value is selected by using the firefly algorithm. By using the Optimized Multi-Metric method the overcrowding attack is detected with less computation complexity. The prevention of overcrowding attack is accomplished by using the packet hiding method such as hiding based ALL-OR-NOTHING Transformation (AONT) method. An experimental result shows that the proposed method achieves high detection accuracy, less computational complexity and computational overhead.