Impacts of Black Hole Attack on Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

Abstract

MANET has a cluster of mobile devices which combine together to establish a short-term network in the areas which do not have a fixed networkinfrastructure. These are self-governed networks with varying topology.This distinctive feature of continuously changing topology along with absence of any central coordinator in these temporary networks enhances chances of various security attacks.Black hole attack is one such challenging issue in MANETs in which, a malevolent node gives false information for the RREQ even in the absence of any functional pathto the terminal node and for this uses routing protocol to proclaim the shortest path to the destination. When it acquires the data packets, as per its basic characteristic, itblocks and later on drops them too. In this paper, our emphasis is to studyBlack hole attack in conglomeration with Ad-hoc On-Demand Vector (AODV) routing protocol. Black Hole attack and AODV are reviewed together and the consequences are elaborated by description of the disruptions resulting from attack andrepercussions on the performance of MANET. Our further work covers the study of detection and prevention mechanismsavailable for Black hole attack in AODV.