Defence System for MANETs. Mobile Adhoc Networks

Master's Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject Engineering - Computer Engineering, grade: A+, , language: English, abstract: The main aim of this work is to guarantee a security solution which provides defence against attacks. To achieve that, a secure routing protocol (SMAODV) is presented which makes use of the multiple paths between source-destination pairs for removing the malicious routes from the network thereby reducing the effect of the attack to a great extent. MANET is a class of ad hoc networks which spans a huge spectrum of other networking paradigms such as WMN, WSN, and VANET etc. There is a dire need for strengthening the base of all these networks from the security point of view. The vulnerability of MANET's towards the attacks is huge as compared to their wired counterparts. MANET's are vulnerable to attacks because of the unique characteristics which they exhibit like the absence of central authority, usage of wireless links, dynamism in topology, shared medium, constrained resources etc. The ramification being that the security needs of MANET's become absolutely different than the ones which exist in the customary networks. One of the basal vulnerabilities of MANET's come from their peer to peer architecture which is completely open wherein the mobile nodes act as routers, the medium of communication is open me reachable to both the legitimate users of the network as well as the malicious nodes. Consequently, there is a bankruptcy of clear line of defence from the perspective of security design. This in turn implies that any node which may even be authentic can enter the network and affect its performance by dropping the packets instead of forwarding them. When these types of attacks occur in ad hoc networks then even the standard routing protocols like AODV, DSDV, DSR, LAR, and LAMR etc. do not provide the required security. The proposed solutions in literature such as SAODV, ARAN, and SEAODV all provide authentication and encryption based solutions to these attack. But, the attack on availability which is the most common and easiest of them all cannot be avoided by authentication and encryption because even the authentic user can be the attacker. Also, encryption cannot be helpful to prevent such attacks. Therefore in such a situation if a proper solution is not provided the entire MANET operation will get crippled.