An approach towards identification of malicious nodes in mobile ad hoc networks Mobile nodes depend upon mutual operation to perform data transmission in an ad hoc network. In absence of central controlling authority, the authenticity of individual nodes plays an important role. Nodes depend upon a mutual understanding for deciding the malfunctioning of any member. The reliability of this decision is vital for forwarding data within the network. Before applying any standard routing protocol, an efficient network partitioning between the reliable and malfunctioning is thus necessary. This has been approached in this work. The success rate and fault tolerance of the approach has also been discussed.