RepuFilter: Prevention of Untrusted Packet Spread Based on Trust Evaluation in Wireless Networks

Wireless networks are vulnerable to many attacks due to its dynamic environments. Unrestricted forwarding of packets from untrusted sources in wireless networks has caused many serious security threats and a great waste of network resources. This paper presents RepuFilter, a probabilistic packet filtering scheme based on trust evaluation, which enables a shared data plane to provide security services for wireless networks. RepuFilter proposes a dynamic trust evaluation model based on the transitivity of trust evaluation between network users, and applies the model to packet filtering. In the framework of RepuFilter, forwarders verify packets with a certain probability, and discard packets from untrusted sources, to prevent the packets from being spread, and reduce inspection expenses as much as possible. We implement RepuFilter and evaluate its performance based on Network Simulator Version 3 (NS3). Simulation results prove that RepuFilter can resist the spread of untrusted packets more effectively than the classic and latest trust models and RepuFilter can meet current network performance requirements.