Performance analysis of ad-hoc networks under black hole attacks

A wireless ad-hoc network is a temporary network set up by wireless nodes usually moving randomly and communicating without a network infrastructure. Due to security vulnerabilities of the routing protocols, however, wireless ad-hoc networks may be unprotected against attacks by the malicious nodes. In this study the effects of black hole attacks on the network performance was investigated. Black hole attacks were simulated in Network Simulator 2 (ns-2) and measured the packet loss in the network with and without a black hole. A simple solution was also proposed against black hole attacks. This solution improved the network performance in the presence of a black hole by about 19%.