Systems, apparatuses and methods may provide for technology that detects one or more non-compliant nodes with respect to a timing schedule, detects one or more compliant nodes with respect to the timing schedule, and identifies a malicious node based on positions of the one or more non-compliant nodes and the one or more compliant nodes in a network topography. The non-compliant node(s) and the compliant node(s) may be detected based on post-synchronization messages, historical attribute data and/or plane diversity data.