Security threats and solutions in MANETs: A case study using AODV and SAODV

Mobile ad hoc network (MANET) security has become the focus of prolific research efforts. Driven by the unique and considerable difficulties of providing security arising from the dynamic nature of MANETs, many security schemes have been proposed. Rather than trying to encompass the entire field of MANET security, this paper focuses on networks using the popular Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocol and a secure extension to AODV, the Secure AODV (SAODV) protocol. SAODV is representative of a number of secure versions of the AODV protocol in that it relies upon the use of cryptographic mechanisms to protect the routing control messages of AODV from being forged and/or altered by attackers. We conduct a vulnerability analysis of SAODV to identify unresolved threats to the algorithm, such as medium access control layer misbehaviour, resources depletion, blackholes, wormholes, jellyfish and rushing attacks. We then compare this vulnerability analysis to schemes that have been proposed to combat the identified threats. These proposals include multipath routing, incentive schemes, directional antennae, packet leashes, randomized route requests, localized self-healing communities and a reactive intrusion detection node blacklisting scheme.