Protection of MANETs from a range of attacks using an intrusion detection and prevention system

Abstract

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are well known to be vulnerable to various attacks due to their lack of centralized control, and their dynamic topology and energy-constrained operation. Much research in securing MANETs has focused on proposals which detect and prevent a specific kind of attack such as sleep deprivation, black hole, grey hole, rushing or sybil attacks. In this paper we propose a generalized intrusion detection and prevention mechanism. We use a combination of anomaly-based and knowledge-based intrusion detection to secure MANETs from a wide variety of attacks. This approach also has the capability to detect new unforeseen attacks. Simulation results of a case study shows that our proposed mechanism can successfully detect attacks, including multiple simultaneous different attacks, and identify and isolate the intruders causing a variety of attacks, with an affordable network overhead. We also investigate the impact on the MANET performance of (a) the various attacks and (b) the type of intrusion response, and we demonstrate the need for an adaptive intrusion response.