A DSR-based routing protocol for mitigating blackhole attacks on mobile ad hoc networks

Abstract

A mobile ad hoc network is a collection of mobiles, autonomous nodes that communicate in a cooperative manner over a wireless channel without any fixed infrastructure, nor built‐in security. As such, this type of network is vulnerable to different types of attacks such as blackhole and wormhole attacks. A blackhole attack is a type of attack where the malicious node (so‐called blackhole node) can attract all the data packets by using a forged route reply packet to falsely claim that it has a shortest route to the destination, thereby dropping all the data packets that it receives. In this paper, an improved version of a dynamic source routing (DSR) protocol (so‐called detecting blackhole attack based on DSR (DBA‐DSR)) is proposed to combat against blackhole attacks in mobile ad hoc networks. Unlike other solutions, which adopt a reactive approach in which blackhole nodes are identified only after the attack has been carried out on the network, our DBA‐DSR scheme detects and isolates the blackhole nodes prior to the actual routing process. This is achieved by using fake route request packets. Simulation results are provided, demonstrating the superiority of DBA‐DSR over DSR in terms of network throughput, packet delivery ratio, and routing overhead, chosen as performance metrics, when blackhole nodes are present in the network. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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“…A MANET can either be a standalone entity or it can be an extension of a wired network. There are many application areas of MANETs, such as:  Open  Closed An open MANET comprises of different users, having different goals, sharing their resources to achieve global connectivity, as in civilian applications [1][2][3][4].…”

“…Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) can be described as an autonomous collection of mobile nodes (users) that communicate over relatively low capacity wireless links, without a centralized infrastructure [1,2]. In these networks, nodal mobility and the wireless communication links may lead to dynamically changing and highly unpredictable topologies.…”

Trust‐based routing method using a mobility‐based clustering approach in mobile ad hoc networks

“…Woungang et al . extended DSR protocol and proposed a new protocol, called detecting blackhole attack based on DSR. The main contribution in detecting blackhole attack based on DSR is to find nodes participating in blackhole attacks prior to the route discovery phase.…”

“…This phenomenon necessitates a routing protocol that can find more stable and qualified routes to the destination. There is an ongoing research on routing protocols aimed to enhance the security of MANETs by improving existent security schemes or proposing new security schemes . In this way, it is necessary to find a trade‐off between performance and security of a MANET.…”

An end to end key establishment scheme for detecting black hole attacks in mobile ad hoc networks

“…This type of attack is done by changing some of the control information or metrics of routing. Impersonation is another type of attack wherein malicious node use identity belonging to other nodes to initiate attacks [20][21][22]. There are different security mechanisms to address the malicious or adversarial nodes [23]: a) Preventive Mechanism This mechanism works as a defense technique by applying encryption and authentication schemes.…”