Secure node misbehaviors in mobile ad hoc networks

Node misbehaviors (NM) are serious attacks on routing protocols in mobile ad hoc networks (MANET). In this paper, two types of NM, single intermediate node packet dropping and group node wormhole attacks, are exclusively identified for the secure ad hoc on-demand distance vector routing protocol (SAODV). Countermeasures are proposed to protect against these NM, such that a near perfect secure routing protocol is achieved. To protect SAODV against any form of single insider attacks, we assign the task of single malicious intermediate node detection and isolation to a group of nodes since there is no centralized authority. These nodes lie around active paths in the MANET. Nodes use the same digital signatures that are used for routing in SAODV to provide authentication and integrity protection for routing information. For wormhole attacks, in which more than one malicious node work in a group, a novel mechanism without time synchronization or location information techniques to detect this attack is proposed. Our simulation results show the network performance degradation after incorporating the above two mechanisms in SAODV is negligible.