Simulation-based Security Analysis of a Reactive Ad hoc Routing Protocol under Black Hole Attacks

Security in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) has received lots of research attention in recent years. With the proliferation of mobile devices and the inherent characteristics of MANETs as self-organized and self-configuring networks, a great need to address security concerns in these networks have arisen. Security in these networks could be looked at from various view points with respect to different layers through which their functionalities are attained. But since the communication between mobile devices in MANETs is achieved through routing, those routing protocols responsible for communications become primary targets for attacks. In the bid to provide secure solutions researchers have focused efforts in attempting to detect these attacks, propose secure routing protocols and investigate more deeply into the effects of these attacks. This work investigates the impact of these security attacks mainly the Black Hole Attack. With the analysis carried out we observed that in the on-demand routing protocol under study (i.e. AODV), the closer a Black Hole node is to the source of traffic, the greater the extent of damage inflicted on the network. Also this attack causes an 86% decrease in packet delivery fraction and an increase in packet drops by the same proportion. Keywords—Black Hole attack, Denial of Service, MANET, MANET Security, Simulation-based security analysis.