On the Attack-and-Fault Tolerance of Intrusion Detection Systems in Wireless Mesh Networks

Intrusion detection in Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN) has recently emerged as an important research area. The diversity in WMN hardware and applications has generated extremely diverse network types, with diverse resource levels and system and threat models. Consequently, a variety of intrusion detection systems (IDS) have been proposed by the research community, each applicable to a specific type of WMN. Although the design and implementation of specific intrusion detection mechanisms have received considerable attention, little effort has been dedicated to the attack-and-fault tolerance of IDS themselves. In this paper we propose a taxonomy that categorizes state-of-the-art IDS solutions in WMN and we investigate the attack-and-fault tolerance of IDS in this taxonomy. We first survey a series of administrative mechanisms for attack-and-fault tolerant (AFT) IDS design. Then we propose modified designs for state-of-the-art IDS solutions that are AFT. Finally, through extensive simulations, we evaluate and compare AFT designed IDS with their original designs, with respect to the IDS performance and costs.