Core: A Collaborative Reputation Mechanism to Enforce Node Cooperation in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Countermeasures for node misbehavior and selfishness are mandatory requirements in MANET. Selfishness that causes lack of node activity cannot be solved by classical security means that aim at verifying the correctness and integrity of an operation. We suggest a generic mechanism based on reputation to enforce cooperation among the nodes of a MANET to prevent selfish behavior. Each network entity keeps track of other entities’ collaboration using a technique called reputation. The reputation is calculated based on various types of information on each entity’s rate of collaboration. Since there is no incentive for a node to maliciously spread negative information about other nodes, simple denial of service attacks using the collaboration technique itself are prevented. The generic mechanism can be smoothly extended to basic network functions with little impact on existing protocols.