On Securing MANET Routing Protocol Against Control Packet Dropping

In this manuscript we deal with securing routing protocols of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) against packet dropping misbehavior. More specifically, we propose a solution to protect control packets of reactive source routing protocols against. Most current proposals focus on data packets. Nonetheless, dropping control packets may be beneficial for selfish nodes and malicious ones as well. For example, simply by dropping RREQ (Route Request) packets a selfish node could exclude itself from routes and thereby avoid receiving data packets to forward. Similarly, a malicious could drop RERR (Route Error) packets to keep the use of failed routes, potentially resulting in a denial of service. Our solution could be intergraded with any source routing protocol. For the implementation in this work, we have chosen one of the most secure protocols, namely ENDAIRA. We assess our solution by an extensive simulation study.