A Combined Solution for Routing and Medium Access Control Layer Attacks in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Problem statement: In Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET), both the routing layer and the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer are vulnerable to several attacks. There are very few techniques to detect and isolate the attacks of both these layers simultaneously. In this study, we developed a combined solution for routing and MAC layer attacks. Approach: Our approach, makes use of three techniques simultaneously which consists of a cumulative frequency based detection technique for detecting MAC layers attacks, data forwarding behavior based detection technique for detecting packet drops and message authentication code based technique for packet modification. Results: Our combined solution presents a reputation value for detecting the malicious nodes and isolates them from further network participation till its revocation. Our approach periodically checks all nodes, including the isolated nodes, at regular time period λ. A node which recovers from its misbehaving condition is revoked to its normal condition after the time period λ. Conclusion/Recommendations: By simulation results, we show that our combined solution provides more security by increased packet delivery ratio and reduced packet drops. We also shown that our approach has less overhead compared to the existing technique.