Author : Nileshkumar K. Ninawe1, Dr Amit R. Gadekar2

Research on routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) focuses on improving routing efficiency. As a result, protocols are vulnerable to various attacks. Over the years, the focus has also been on improving the security of these networks. Different solutions have been proposed for different types of attacks, however, these solutions often impair routing efficiency or network overload. When the attacker uses the topology knowledge of the network, a major DOS attack against the Optimized Link State Routing Protocol (OLSR) occurs. The attacker can use the topology knowledge of the network to isolate the victim from the rest of the network and then refuse Communication services to victims. In this paper, we propose a novel solution that can protect the OLSR protocol from node isolation attacks by adopting the same strategy as the attack itself. Through extensive experiments, we have proven that 1) the proposed protection measures can prevent more than 95% of attacks, and 2) as the network size increases, the required overhead will be greatly reduced until it cannot be resolved. Finally, we suggest that this solution can be extended to other DOS-like attacks against OLSR.

Keywords:  Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), Denial Contradictions with Fictitious Node Mechanism (DCFM), Optimized Link State Routing protocol (OLSR)