Handling Malicious Flooding Attacks through Enhancement of Packet Processing Technique in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

Abstract —Mobile ad hoc networks are expected to be widely used in the near future. However, they are susceptible to various security threats because of their inherent characteristics. Malicious flooding attacks are one of the fatal attacks on mobile ad hoc networks. These attacks can severely clog an entire network, as a result of clogging the victim node. If collaborative multiple attacks are conducted, it becomes more difficult to prevent. To defend against these attacks, we propose a novel defense mechanism in mobile ad hoc networks. The proposed scheme enhances the amount of legitimate packet processing at each node. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme also improves the end-to-end packet delivery ratio. Keywords —Collaborative Attack, Malicious Flooding Attack, Wireless Ad Hoc Network 1. I NTRODUCTION As many users like to use mobile equipment such as cell phones, smart phones, laptops etc. mobile ad hoc networks are expected to be widely used in the near future. Today’s mobile nodes have a broad range of applications. With the introduction of smart phones into the market, there is an immense need for privatization and security. Today’s mobile nodes do not have many restrictions in terms of processor speed etc. One main problem existing in mobile nodes in use these days is their battery life due to the immense energy that they de-pend upon. But, this is not the problem we will be discussing in the following paper. In the pre-sent research we assume that this energy is available in sufficient quantities for the mobile nodes to be able to function and process data. As the technology involving mobile nodes is developing at a fast pace, we expect that mobile ad hoc networks, which use mobile nodes as communication entities, will be widely used in the future. In mobile ad hoc networks, mobile nodes communicate with other nodes helped by neighboring nodes rather than base stations in a multi-hop fashion [1]. Hence, mobile ad hoc networks do not require any additional costs, such as costs for installing base stations, and are formed on-the-fly. However, all signals go through bandwidth-constrained wireless links [1]. Moreover, mobile nodes used in mobile ad hoc networks are compact and portable, so they have limited resources