WIRELESS AD-HOC NETWORK UNDER BLACK-HOLE ATTACK
Shree Om, Mohammad Talib · International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications · 2011
Wireless Ad-hoc Network is a temporary and decentralized type of wireless network. Due to security vulnerabilities in the routing protocol currently, this type of network is unprotected to network layer attacks. Black-hole attack is such a type of attack and is a Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack. Due to its nature, the attack makes the source node send all the data packets to a Black-hole node that ends up dropping all the packets. The aim of this paper is to reflect light on the severe effects of a Black-hole attack in a Wireless Ad-hoc network and the drawbacks of the security mechanisms being used for the mitigation of this attack. using one physical device obtained either by impersonating other nodes or by making use of false identities [4]. The attack can impact several services in adhoc networks, e.g., multipath routing and data aggregation. iii) Worm-hole Attack: This attack requires the presence of two colluding malicious nodes in ad-hoc network. In this attack, a malicious node captures packets from one location and “tunnels” these packets to the other malicious node, which is assumed to be located at some distance. The second malicious node is then expected to replay the “tunnelled” packets locally [4]. iv) Sleep Deprivation Attack: Usually, this attack is practical only in ad hoc networks where battery life is a critical parameter. Battery-powered devices try to conserve energy by transmitting only when absolutely necessary. An attacker can attempt to consume batteries by requesting routes, or by forwarding unnecessary packets to the node using, for example, a black hole attack [8]. v) Routing Table Overflow: In this attack, the attacker’s goal is to create enough routes to prevent new routes from being created or to overwhelm the protocol implementation by creating routes to non-existent nodes [8]. Our paper looks at the effect of black-hole attack on packet delivery in a wireless adhoc network. Before we get in to the description of the simulation results, we would like to give a brief background black-hole attack and vulnerabilities in adhoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) routing protocol.