SIEVE: a distributed, accurate, and robust technique to identify malicious nodes in data dissemination on MANET

In this paper we consider the following problem: nodes in a MANET must disseminate data chunks using rateless codes but some nodes are assumed to be malicious, i.e., before transmitting a coded packet they may modify its payload. Nodes receiving corrupted coded packets are prevented from correctly decoding the original chunk. We propose SIEVE, a fully distributed technique to identify malicious nodes. SIEVE is based on special messages called checks that nodes periodically transmit. A check contains the list of nodes identifiers that provided coded packets of a chunk as well as a flag to signal if the chunk has been corrupted. SIEVE operates on top of an otherwise reliable architecture and it is based on the construction of a factor graph obtained from the collected checks on which an incremental belief propagation algorithm is run to compute the probability of a node being malicious. Analysis is carried out by detailed simulations using ns-3. We show that SIEVE is very accurate and discuss how nodes speed impacts on its accuracy. We also show SIEVE robustness under several attack scenarios and deceiving actions.