Securing AODV Routing Protocol in MANET Based on Cryptographic Authentication Mechanism

In mobile ad hoc wireless network (MANET), secure communication is more challenging task due to its fundamental characteristics like infrastructure less, wireless link, distributed cooperation, dynamic topology, lack of association, resource constrained and physical vulnerability of node. In MANET, attacks can be broadly classified in two categories: routing attacks and data forwarding attacks. Any action not following rules of routing protocols belongs to routing attacks. The main objective of routing attacks to mislead or disrupt normal functioning of network by advertising false routing updates. On the other hand data forwarding attacks include actions such as modification or dropping of data packet that does not disrupt routing protocol. In this thesis work, we proposed a method to secure ad hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) routing protocol. The proposed method provides security for routing packets and can efficiently prevent the attacks such as black hole, modifying routing information and impersonation. The proposed method uses hashed message authentication code (HMAC) function which provides fast message verification and sender as well as intermediate nodes authentication. We simulate and compare the proposed method with original AODV and secure AODV (SAODV) protocol using network simulator tool (NS2). Simulation result shows that proposed method minimizes the time delay and network routing load involved in computation and verification of security fields during route discovery process and performs better than the original AODV protocol in the presence of malicious nodes performing black hole attack.