Solution to Prevent Rushing Attack in Wireless Mobile Ad hoc Networks

Abstract

An ad hoc network is a collection of mobile nodes that dynamically form a temporary network and are capable of communicating with each other without the use of a network infrastructure or any centralized administration. Due to open medium, dynamic topology, distributed cooperation, constrained capabilities ad hoc networks are vulnerable to many types of security attacks, one such attack is rushing attack. It is a malicious attack that is directed against on demand routing protocols that uses duplicate suppression at each node. The attacker exploits this property in order to prevent communication between the important nodes in the network. To achieve this, it will try to be a part of the route that the source node uses to transmit data to the destination node. By capturing the route successfully, the attacker will disrupt the exchange of packets between the nodes, thus resulting in denial-of-service [1]. This paper focuses on the security of dynamic source routing (DSR) protocol in order to prevent the rushing attack. Based on the simulation study, it is observed that, the new protocol is successful in preventing the rushing attack and provides security even against the strongest rushing attackers with a negligible increase in the end-to-end delay. The new protocol not only enhances the security but also enhances the basic properties of DSR, so that throughput and packet delivery ratio is increased during data transmission.