Mitigating the Effects of Position-Based Routing Attacks in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

In this paper, we investigate the effects of routing loop, sinkhole, and wormhole attacks on the position-based routing (PBR) in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). We also introduce a new attack termed wormhole-aided sybil attack on PBR. Our study shows that the wormhole-aided sybil attack has the worst impact on the packet delivery in PBR. To ensure the reliability of PBR in VANETs, we propose a set of plausibility checks that can mitigate the impact of these PBR attacks. The proposed plausibility checks do not require adding extra hardware to the vehicles. In addition, they can adapt to different road characteristics and traffic conditions. Simulation results are given to demonstrate that the proposed plausibility checks are able to efficiently mitigate the impact of the previously mentioned PBR attacks.