Quantifying the Severity of Blackhole Attack in Wireless Mobile Adhoc Networks

Abstract

Blackhole attack is one of the severe attacks in MANET routing protocols. Generation of this attack is simple, which does not require specific tools or sophisticated attack techniques. However, this attack seriously corrupts the routing tables of nodes in the network. Even worse, the attack could increase the chances of losing confidential data and deny network services. Many researchers have proposed a variety of solutions to prevent this Conventional Blackhole Attack (CBA). Unfortunately, none of them has measured the severity of this attack. Filling gaps in measuring the severity of this attack, this research proposes a new security metrics, namely Corruption Routing Table (CRT), Compromising Relay Node (CRN) and Compromising Originator Node (CON). In addition, this research also introduces a new blackhole attack, namely Hybrid Black Hole Attack (HBHA) with two variants — Independent and Cooperative HBHAs. The proposed metrics proved effective in measuring the severity of both CBA and HBHAs. Simulation using Java in Time Simulator/Scalable Wireless Adhoc Network Simulator (JiST/SWANS) showed that Independent HBHA is the most severe attack compared to Cooperative HBHA and CBA. In addition, Cooperative HBHA is the most efficient attack than Independent HBHA and CBA.