Various Security Attacks in mobile ad hoc networks

Various Security Attacks in
Mobile Ad-hoc Networks
Prepared by:
Kishan N. Patel

OUTLINE
Overview Of Manet
Manet Challenges
Routing Protocols
Routing Attacks
Proactive Routing Protocol
Reactive Routing Protocol
Hybrid Routing Protocol
Classification Of Attacks
I. Data Traffic Attacks
II. Control Traffic Attacksc
Conclusion

OVERVIEW OF MANET
 A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a continuously self-
configuring, infrastructure-less network of mobile devices
connected without wires.
 Host movement is frequent.
 Topology changes frequently.
 No cellular infrastructure. Multi-hop wireless links.
 Data must be routed via intermediate nodes.
A
B A
B

MANET CHALLENGES
Packet loss due to transmission errors
 Variable capacity links
 Frequent disconnections/partitions
 Limited communication bandwidth
 Broadcast nature of the communications
 Dynamically changing topologies/routes
 Lack of mobility awareness by system/applications
 Short battery lifetime
 Limited capacities

ROUTING PROTOCOLS
 Ad hoc routing protocols can be classified as either proactive or
reactive depending on the method used to discover and maintain
routes.
 Proactive routing protocols discover and maintain a complete set of
routes for the lifetime of the network.
 In contrast, reactive routing protocols only find routes when
needed, and maintain those routes for the duration of
communication.
 The primary objective of a routing protocol must be to set up an
optimal route that has minimal overhead and consume minimum
bandwidth

TYPE PROTOCOL
Proactive
(Table-driven)
DSDV, OLSR,
WRP, CGSR, FSR
Reactive
(On-demand)
AODV, DSR,
ACOR, ABR
Hybrid
TORA, ZRP,
ARPAM, OORP,
HSR, CGSR,

ROUTING ATTACKS
 Due to lack of trusted centralized administration, limited bandwidth,
limited power, wireless links, dynamic topology and easy
eavesdropping MANETs are more susceptible to security attacks
than existing conventional networks.
 An attacker can violate them by passively or actively attacking on
Ad hoc Networks.
 Both active and passive attacks can be launched on any layer of the
network protocol stack on Ad hoc networks.

PROACTIVE ROUTING
PROTOCOL
 In networks utilizing a proactive routing protocol, every node
maintains one or more tables representing the entire topology of the
network. These tables are updated regularly in order to maintain a
up-to-date routing information from each node to every other node.
 The main disadvantages of such algorithms are:
1. Respective amount of data for maintenance.
2. Slow reaction on restructuring and failures.

REACTIVE ROUTING PROTOCOL
 This type of protocol combines the advantages of proactive and
reactive routing. The routing is initially established with some
proactively prospected routes and then serves the demand from
additionally activated nodes through reactive flooding. The choice
of one or the other method requires predetermination for typical
cases. The main disadvantages of such algorithms are:
1. Advantage depends on number of other nodes activated.
2. Reaction to traffic demand depends on gradient of traffic volume.

HYBRID ROUTING PROTOCOL
 Hybrid Routing is a third classification of routing algorithm.
 Hybrid routing protocols use distance-vectors for more accurate
metrics to determine the best paths to destination networks, and
report routing information only when there is a change in the
topology of the network.

TYPES OF ATTACKS EXAMPLE
Passive
Attacks
Traffic analysis,
Traffic monitoring and
eavesdropping
Active
Attacks
Modification,
impersonation,
fabrication,
jamming and message replay

CLASSIFICATION OF ATTACKS
 we have categorized the presently existing attacks into two broad
categories: DATA traffic attacks and CONTROL traffic attacks.
 This classification is based on their common characteristics and
attack goals.
 For example:
Black-Hole attack drops packets every time.
Gray-Hole attack also drops packets but its action is based on two
conditions: time or sender node.

Various Security Attacks in mobile ad hoc networks

DATA Traffic Attack
 DATA traffic attack deals either in nodes dropping data packets
passing through them or in delaying of forwarding of the data
packets.
 Some types of attacks choose victim packets for dropping while
some of them drop all of them irrespective of sender nodes.
 This may highly degrade the quality of service and increases end to
end delay.
 This also causes significant loss of important data.
 For e.g., a 100Mbps wireless link can behave as 1Mbps connection.
Moreover, unless there is a redundant path around the erratic node,
some of the nodes can be unreachable from each other altogether.

Black-Hole Attack
 In this attack, a malicious node acts like a Black hole, dropping all
data packets passing through it as like matter and energy disappears
from our universe in a black hole. If the attacking node is a
connecting node of two connecting components of that network,
then it effectively separates the ne
 Here the Black-Hole node separates the network into two Parts:
1. Collecting multiple RREP messages (from more than two nodes)
and thus hoping multiple redundant paths to the destination node
and then buffering the packets until a safe route is found.
2. Maintaining a table in each node with previous sequence number
in increasing order. Each node before forwarding packets increases
the sequence number. The sender node broadcasts RREQ to its
neighbors and once this RREQ reaches the destination, it replies
with a RREP with last packet sequence number. If the intermediate
node finds that RREP contains a wrong sequence number, it
understands that somewhere something went wrong.

Cooperative Black-Hole Attack
 This attack is similar to Black-Hole attack, but more than one
malicious node tries to disrupt the network simultaneously.
 It is one of the most severe DATA traffic attack and can totally
disrupt the operation of an Ad Hoc network.
 Mostly the only solution becomes finding alternating route to the
destination, if at all exists.
 Detection method is similar to ordinary Black-Hole attack. In
addition another solution is securing routing and node discovery in
MANET by any suitable protocol such as SAODV, SNRP, SND,
SRDP etc.
 Since each node is already trusted, black hole node should not be
appearing in the network.

Gray-Hole Attack
 Gray-Hole attack has its own characteristic behavior. It too drops
DATA packets, but node’s malicious activity is limited to certain
conditions or trigger.
 Two most common type of behavior:
1. Node dependent attack – drops DATA packets destined towards a
certain victim node or coming from certain node while for other
nodes it behaves normally by routing DATA packets to the
destination nodes correctly.
2. Time dependent attack – drops DATA packets based on some
predetermined/trigger time while behaving normally during the
other instances.

Jellyfish Attack
 Jellyfish attack is somewhat different from Black-Hole & Gray-
Hole attack. Instead of blindly dropping the data packets, it delays
them before finally delivering them.
 It may even scramble the order of packets in which they are
received and sends it in random order.
 This disrupts the normal flow control mechanism used by nodes for
reliable transmission. Jellyfish attack can result in significant end to
end delay and thereby degrading QoS. Few of the methods used by
attacker in this attack:

CONTROL Traffic Attack
 Mobile Ad-Hoc Network (MANET) is inherently vulnerable to
attack due to its fundamental characteristics, such as open medium,
distributed nodes, autonomy of nodes participation in network
(nodes can join and leave the network on its will), lack of
centralized authority which can enforce security on the network,
distributed co-ordination and cooperation.

Worm Hole Attack
 Worm hole, in cosmological term, connects two distant points in
space via a shortcut route.
 In the same way in MANET also one or more attacking node can
disrupt routing by short-circuiting the network, thereby disrupting
usual flow of packets.
 If this link becomes the lowest cost path to the destination then
these malicious nodes will always be chosen while sending packets
to that destination.
 The attacking node then can either monitor the traffic or can even
disrupt the flow (via one of the DATA traffic attack).

HELLO Flood Attack
 The attacker node floods the network with a high quality route with
a powerful transmitter.
 So, every node can forward their packets towards this node hoping
it to be a better route to destination. Some can forward packets for
those destinations which are out of the reach of the attacker node.
 A single high power transmitter can convince that all the nodes are
his neighbor.
 The attacker node need not generate a legitimate traffic; it can just
perform a selective replay attack as its power overwhelms other
transceivers.

Bogus Registration Attack
 A Bogus registration attack is an active attack in which an attacker
disguises itself as another node either by sending stolen beacon or
generating such false beacons to register himself with a node as a
neighbor.
 Once registered, it can snoop transmitted packets or may disrupt the
network altogether.
 But this type of attack is difficult to achieve as the attacker needs to
intimately know the masquerading nodes identity and network
topology .

Man in Middle Attack
 In Man in Middle attack, the attacker node creeps into a valid route
and tries to sniff packets flowing through it.
 To perform man in middle attack, the attacker first needs to be part
of that route.
 It can do that by either temporarily disrupting the route by
deregistering a node by sending malicious disassociation beacon
captured previously or registering itself in next route timeout event.
 One way of protecting packets flowing through MANET from
prying eyes is encrypting each packet. Though key distribution
becomes a security issue.

Rushing Attack
 Each node before transmitting its data, first establishes a valid route to
destination.
 Sender node broadcasts a RREQ (route request) message in
neighborhood and valid routes replies with RREP (route reply) with
proper route information.
 Some of the protocols use duplicate suppression mechanism to limit the
route request and reply chatter in the network. Rushing attack exploits
this duplicate suppression mechanism.
 Rushing attacker quickly forwards with a malicious RREP on behalf of
some other node skipping any proper processing /
 Due to duplicate suppression, actual valid RREP message from valid
node will be discarded and consequently the attacking node becomes
part of the route .
 In rushing attack, attacker node does send packets to proper node after
its own filtering is done, so from outside the network behaves normally
as if nothing happened. But it might increase the delay in packet
delivering to destination node

Cache Poisoning Attack
 Generally in AODV, each node keeps few of its most recent
transmission routes until timeout occurs for each entry. So each
route lingers for some time in node’s memory.
 If some malicious node performs a routing attack then they will
stay in node’s route table until timeout occurs or a better route is
found. An attacker node can advertise a zero metric to all of its
destinations.
 Such route will not be overwritten unless timeout occurs.
 It can even advertise itself as a route to a distant node which is out
of its reach. Once it becomes a part of the route, the attacker node
can perform its malicious activity.
 Effect of Cache poisoning can be limited by either adding boundary
leashes or by token authentication. Also each node can maintain its
friend-foe list based on historical statistics of neighboring nodes
performance.

Sybil Attack
 Sybil attack manifests itself by faking multiple identities by
pretending to be consisting of multiple nodes in the network.
 So one single node can assume the role of multiple nodes and can
monitor or hamper multiple nodes at a time.
 If Sybil attack is performed over a blackmailing attack, then level of
disruption can be quite high. Success in Sybil attack depends on
how the identities are generated in the system.

Conclusion
 We categorize the different types of ad hoc security attacks based on
their characteristics to reduce the mitigation period. By bringing the
attacks under these two categories the complicacy of naming also
reduces.
 We have look on the existing algorithms needed to avoid the attacks
and have tried to bind the attacks into categories according to that .

Various Security Attacks in mobile ad hoc networks

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