Modeling and analysis of Sequence Number Attack and its detection in AODV

In the recent years, wireless technology has enjoyed a tremendous rise in popularity and usage, thus opening new fields of applications in the domain of networking. One such field concerns mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) where the participating nodes do not rely on any existing network infrastructure. By definition, the nature of ad hoc networks is dynamically changing and they have a fully decentralized topology. Hence, security is hard to achieve due to the dynamic nature of the relationships between the participating nodes as well as the vulnerabilities and limitations of the wireless transmissions medium. Several designs for a secure routing protocol have been proposed but most of them require changes to the underlying protocol and sometimes it cannot be logically avoided. This paper modeled sequence number attack and its detection in AODV-enabled mobile ad hoc networks. Also introduced an adversary responsible for introducing sequence number attack in the network and measured its consequences. We then analyzed the detection module and measured its effectiveness against the attack. The detection module does not introduce any changes to the underlying routing protocol as it involves additional components between network and the protocol.