Prevention of dropping routing traffic attack in wireless Ad-Hoc AODV-based networks using Real-time Host Intrusion Detection

A mobile ad hoc network is a collection of wireless nodes without any existing network infrastructure or centralized administration. It applies some special routing protocols, e.g. AODV, having the ability to forward the packets in dynamic network topology. The existing routing protocols can be divided into unsecure and secure protocols. They could not address all possible attacks aiming the disruption of the protocol itself. This paper addresses the problem of dropping Routing Traffic attack by applying multiple selfish nodes in a simulated environment. We propose a Real-time Host Intrusion Detection for Ad hoc Networks (REHIDAN) technique to identify the selfish nodes in the ad hoc network. An AODV-based REHIDAN technique is presented to take the appropriate countermeasures to minimize the effectiveness of the attack and maintain the network performance within the accepted limits. The ad hoc network is simulated using the Optimized Network Engineering Tools (OPNET). Its performance under the dropping traffic attack and after applying the developed HIDS is measured. The results show that the proposed REHIDAN technique reduces the end-to-end delay and the routing overhead ratio.