RFAP, a preventive measure against route request Flooding Attack in MANETS

Abstract

The operations of Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) are still insecure due to some reasons. One of the main reasons is insecure routing protocol. Generally ad-hoc network operations utilize reactive routing protocol such as AODV, to complete their routing needs. The route construction phase of this protocol is vulnerable; the malicious node easily disrupts the communication. In one case malicious node sends bulk route request (RREQ) packets to void addresses that occupy the network resources. This type of attack is called RREQ Flooding Attack (RFA). There are various schemes to mitigate the RFA but they are inadequate towards mitigating the attack. One of the main issues present in majority of proposed solutions is not to recover malicious node after punishment. This paper introduces RFAP, a scheme for mitigating the RREQ flooding attack in MANET by utilizing AODV protocol. The RFAP is an amended form of AODV. The scheme is specially design for MANET that has higher node mobility. Recovery of malicious nodes after reasonable punishment is the main objective of the scheme. Simulations are performed using NS-2 simulator and results are presented. These results illustrate that RFAP has ability to separate the flooder node from the network with more reliable as compare to simple AODV.