Defending Every Tick: Comprehensive Attack Mitigation and Feasibility Analysis for Ad Hoc Time Synchronization -- 2025 IEEE 16th Annual Ubiquitous Computing, Electronics & Mobile Communication Conference (UEMCON25)

Time synchronization is essential for coordination in wireless sensor and ad hoc networks, yet existing protocols remain vulnerable to adversarial manipulation. This paper systematically examines the attack surface of ad hoc time synchronization, categorizing threats that include delay, replay, spoofing, drift, Sybil, wormhole, selective forwarding, man-in-the-middle, flooding, and clock skew. We review and map countermeasures such as authentication, statistical filtering, neighbor consistency checks, distance bounding, and anomaly detection, highlighting their strengths, costs, and residual risks. Our analysis reveals key security-performance trade-offs and provides practical guidelines for resource-constrained deployments. Research shows that no single defense is sufficient; instead, layered approaches are required to achieve a balance between resilience, scalability, and precision.

Defending Every Tick: Comprehensive Attack Mitigation and Feasibility Analysis for Ad Hoc Time Synchronization -- 2025 IEEE 16th Annual Ubiquitous Computing, Electronics & Mobile Communication Conference (UEMCON25) Academic Article