Routing Attacks and Solutions in Mobile Ad hoc Networks

On the basis of introducing the basic conception of mobile ad hoc network, this paper discusses some types of possible security threats to its routing protocols. A security routing mechanism based on common neighbor listening is proposed. In this mechanism, the trustvalue and trustthreshold are defined to evaluate a node´s credit standing and judge whether a node is a malicious node or not. The common neighbor which holds the biggest trustvalue is chosen to listen to the network. The mechanism can react quickly and effectively protect the network from kinds of attacks when some malicious nodes occur in the ad hoc network. Once the route is destroyed by malicious node, common neighbor will search another route to the destination during a route discovery phase. The mechanism can reinforce the security of on-demand protocols such as AODV (ad hoc on-demand distance vector) and DSR (dynamic source routing). The performance of common neighbor listening mechanism in AODV is justified by computer simulation.