Transactions based secure routing in wireless networks: a cognitive science approach

Abstract

Secure routing is the process of selecting safe and unthreatened paths in a network along which to send network traffic. There is a strong need for routing security in wireless networks, because there is a dramatic increase in routing attacks in recent years and directly affects the performance of the network. In this paper we present a Transactions Based Secure Routing (TBSR) protocol for data transmission. Here Cognitive Agents (CAs) with Behaviors-Beliefs (BB) model are placed on routers to generate beliefs over the routers functionalities w.r.t. genuinity and various transactions are classified based on the Transaction Subtlety Levels (TSL). These two factors are used in determining secure paths for data transmission of varied security levels and there by enhancing the network performance. The results are presented to demonstrate the routing delay, latency, Quality of Service(QoS), and throughput.intention of flooding request to the router affecting the availability. Packet mistreating attacks: In this type of attack, the router is injected with malicious codes, which simply mistreats the packets. This type of attack is very difficult to find and debug. Routing table poisoning: Routing table poisoning means the unwanted or malicious change in routing tables. This is carried out by editing the routing information update packets that are advertised by routers. This attack can cause severe damage in the network by entering wrong routing table entries in the routing table.Hit-and-run attacks: This attack is also called test attack where the attacker injects malicious packets into the router and sees if the network is on line and functioning or not. If yes, an attacker sends further more malicious packets to harm the router. This type of attack is hard to identify and can cause severe damage to the routers work. Persistent attacks: Unlike hit-and-run attack, in this attack, an attacker repeatedly injects malicious packets into the router causing the router to exploit vulnerabilities. This type of attack is a bit easier to detect compared with other router attacks.