On the feasibility of intrusion detection system in wireless sensor network

A Mobile Adhoc Network (MANET) is an autonomous system of mobile nodes connected by wireless links. Each node operates not only as an end system but also as a router to forward packets. The nodes are free to move about and organize themselves into a network. A MANET does not require any fixed infrastructure such as base stations; therefore, it is an attractive networking option for connecting mobile devices quickly and spontaneously. Most existing protocols, applications and services for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs) assume a cooperative and friendly network environment and do not incorporate security. Therefore, the potential for attacks in this environment is great and the aim of this study is to address the problem of attacks on mobile nodes. Some popular methods used to detect attacks on mobile nodes and to protect them are discussed in this report. The security of data becomes more important with the increased use of commercial applications over wireless network environments. This paper presents a study of traffic patterns for various WSN attacks. There are several problems of security in wireless networks due to intruders and different type of attacks such as Node Isolation, Route Disruption and Resource Consumption. Normally, attacks by an intruder cause unauthorized use of the wireless network so that the whole network will be suffered from packet losses and reduced throughput. This thesis describes these threats for mobile adhoc networks and presents a possible approach to handle such threats efficiently. The main principle of the proposed approach was to use an attacking agent to introduce various attacks on existing Ad-hoc on demand distance (AODV) vector MANET routing protocol.;The feasibility of the proposed approach is examined using Net Simulator 2. The attacking agent is used to introduce attacks in the network topology. The network operates in three modes namely normal mode, attack mode and detection and recovery mode. The particular node dropping the packets, diverting the route and consuming more resources have been detected by the proposed system. Also, a recovery procedure is discussed for the MANET under various attacks. The recovery has been provided by finding the attacker node and isolating that particular node from the network topology. It was shown that the performance of the proposed system increases significantly by measuring packet drops for various attacks.