Mitigating denial of service attacks in mobile ad hoc networks

A mobile ad hoc or dynamic network consists of a set of peer-to-peer nodes and they communicate with each other through wireless channels. Such a network lacks specialized routing infrastructure and relies on the nodes to perform efficient routing. The Ad hoc on Demand Distance Vector Routing (AODV) protocol for routing in Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANET's) was designed keeping only the routing perspective in mind and neglecting the security considerations. This makes the protocol susceptible to a variety of attacks. We identify various Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks against AODV and provide a scheme to combat most of them. Our scheme 'DosHoc' makes use of digital signatures and double hash authentication to mitigate some of the common DoS attacks.