Trust-Aware Early Detection of Grey-Hole Behaviour in
Flying Ad Hoc Wireless Networks: A Data-Driven Study
Using Recent FANET Traces
Meinhaj Hussain1,*, Andino Maseleno2
1Rennier University, Ireland
2Institut Bakti Nusantara, Lampung, Indonesia
Emails: meinhaj@rennier.online; andino.maseleno@ibnus.ac.id
Abstract
Flying ad hoc networks (FANETs) enable dynamic multi-hop communication in un-manned aerial
nodes, but their routing plane is vulnerable to selective forwarding attacks that decrease packet
delivery rates while avoiding the sudden effects of denial. This paper proposes a trust-aware routing
and detection approach for early detection of grey-holes in ad hoc flying networks. The paper employs
an analysis-ready data set based on the public FAN-GHETS24 data set, a new data set for early
time-series classification of attacks in FANETs. The Trust-Aware Routing Grey-Hole Detection
(TAR-GHD) model uses a com-bination of link quality evidence, route stability, packet consistency
and trust dynamics in a lightweight detection layer that can be executed alongside traditional ad hoc
routing. A mathematical formulation is given for evidence aggregation, temporal trust evolution, risk
assessment and route warning. The empirical study measures the detection of normal, mild, moderate
and heavy grey-hole attacks in various node-density, mobility, observation window, and classification
settings. The findings demonstrate that trust and packet-loss dynamics offer reliable early indicators
of grey-hole attacks, while mobility and route changes make it harder to distinguish normal loss from
malicious loss. The best-performed configuration resulted in an F1-score over 0.93 (held-out
evaluation), with the most influential features related to packet delivery, forwarding ratio, trust score
and drop-rate dynamics. The results highlight lightweight and explainable trust evidence as a viable
technique for enhancing the security of wireless ad hoc routing in UAV-assisted applications.
Keywords: Wireless ad hoc communication; Flying ad hoc networks; FANET; Grey-hole
attack; Trust-aware routing; Intrusion detection; UAV networks; Data-driven network security