BlackHole Attack and Detection Method for AODV Routing Protocol in MANETs

Causing packet loss due to attacks by malicious nodes is one of the most important problem in MANETs. There are many ways by which packet loss can occur in MANETs such as broken links, transmission errors, no route to the destination and attacks caused by malicious nodes. To determine the exact cause of packet loss in wireless network is a challenging task. In this paper, we have investigated packet loss problem caused by a malicious nodes that performs the well known attack called BlackHole attack in the network. To mitigate the effects of such attack, we have also proposed a detection technique that efficiently detects the malicious nodes in the network. We have done simulations using NS-3 simulator. BlackHole attack is also called sequence number attack because it is created using and modifying sequence number field in routing control packets. We have performed the attack and its detection method on a of the well known and largely used MANET routing protocol known as Ad Hoc Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol. We have simulated this attack and determined effect of this attack on network performance by different network scenario. Furthermore, we have implemented a detection method that helps to isolates the malicious nodes in the network.