A Novel Gray Hole Attack Detection Scheme for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Mobile ad hoc networks are vulnerable to various types of denial of service (DoS) attacks for the absence of fixed network infrastructure. The gray hole attack is a type of DoS attacks. In this attack, an adversary silently drops some or all of the data packets sent to it for further forwarding even when no congestion occurs. Firstly, DSR protocol, aggregate signature algorithm and network model were introduced. Secondly, we proposed to use aggregate signature algorithm to trace packet dropping nodes. The proposal was consisted of three related algorithms: the creating proof algorithm, the checkup algorithm and the diagnosis algorithm. The first was for creating proof and the second was for checking up source route nodes, and the last was for locating the malicious nodes. Finally, the efficiency of the proposal was analyzed. The simulation results using ns-2 show that in a moderately changing network, most of the malicious nodes could be detected, the routing packet overhead was low, and the packet delivery rate has been improved.