MANET Routing Attacks and Their Countermeasures: A Survey

Abstract

Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) is sometimes described as an autonomous system designed through the coordination of a collection of mobile nodes that communicate with each other via wireless connections. Nodes in the network behave as end-systems as well as packet forwarding routers. Every node can move freely, change locations and configure itself to form a network. MANET poses challenges such as open peer-to-peer network infrastructure, shared wireless media, severe resource constraints and highly dynamic topology of network. Special / proper routing protocols are required to cope with the challenges. Choosing the algorithms had to understand the characteristics of the network, such as node density, size and mobility. The primary concern of routing protocols in MANET is to; establish an optimal and efficient route between the communicating parties. Any routing phase attack can disrupt communication and paralyze the entire network. Providing security for a protected communication between nodes in routing has thus become a prime concern. MANET's dependability and security aspects, such as jamming and eavesdropping, should be taken care for the users to perform secured peer-to - peer communication over a wireless multi-hop channel. A user must be provided with security services such as authentication, integrity, non-repudiation, confidentiality, key and trust management and access control, depending on the context of the application. In this paper we have tried to present the entire thing; starting from the basic concept of MANET, its architecture, routing protocols, attacks during routing, security attributes and the proposed countermeasures at a single place. This paper will facilitate the researchers to understand the security challenges in MANET and motivate them to design a multi-fence security solution to achieve both bound protection and desirable network performance, considering all three security components detection, reaction and prevention.