Route Request Flooding based Denial of Service Attack in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks and Selected Defending Measures: A Review

Wireless Ad Hoc Networks are gaining popularity nowadays due to easiness in deployment and management of the network. They are self organizing wireless networks formed by mobile nodes on-the-fly without using any fixed infrastructure. They are widely useful in military based applications, emergency search and rescue operation during disaster management or even communication in big superstores. However, due to their decentralized and distributed operation, security is a major concern in these type of networks. Limited computational capability of the nodes and lower battery backup created added constraints which further reduces the possibility of using cryptographic techniques in securing these networks. Availability is one of the security requirements needed for any wireless networks. Threat to availability is Denial of Service (DoS) attack. Flooding attack is one of various DoS attacks that can be launched from various layer of protocol stack. This paper is intended to provide a review of Route Request (RREQ) flooding attack and their state-of-the-art remedial measures in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks.