Analyzing the Impact of Misbehaving Nodes in Ad Hoc Routing

Routing is the key issue for ad hoc networks due to the wireless medium, absence of infra-structure and distributed operation. In ad hoc networks, every node acts as a router. Hence, securing the routing mechanism is a critical issue. This paper analyzes attacks that exploit the vulnerabilities of the ad hoc routing mechanisms. The attacks are based on the malicious behavior of some network nodes, disturbing the forwarding of control messages. AODV is the routing protocol chosen for study. AODV is a reactive protocol, specific for ad hoc networks, whose routes are setup on demand. Therefore, the malicious behavior of some nodes may affect the whole network performance. The paper shows the effect of different attacks based on simulation results of the action of malicious nodes. We identify the most effective attacks in terms of network performance degradation using the total data packet delivery rate as metric. Key-words: mobile ad hoc networks, routing, security.