PurposeThe mischievous nodes that defy the standard corrupt the exhibition of good nodes considerably. Therefore, an intrusion discovery mechanism should be included to the mobile ad-hoc network (MANET). In this paper, worm-hole and other destructive malignant attacks are propelled in MANET.Design/methodology/approachA wireless ad-hoc network also called as mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is a gathering of hubs that utilizes a wireless channel to exchange information and coordinate together to establish information exchange among any pair of hubs, without any centralized structure. The security issue is a major difficulty while employing MANETs.FindingsConsequently, the attacks due to the malicious node activity are detected using Hybrid Reactive Search and Bat (HRSB) mechanism to prevent the mischievous nodes from entering the network beneath the untruthful information. Moreover, the attack detection rate and node energy are predicted for determining the lifetime of the node.Originality/valueThe simulation outcomes of the proposed HRSB technique are evaluated with the prevailing methods. The comparison studies have proven the efficacy of the current research model by attaining high attack detection rate and achieving more network lifetime.