International Journal of Computer Information Systems, Vol. 3, No.

3, 2011

Security Challenges in Mobile Adhoc Network(MANET)

Suneet Kumar
Computer Science dept. Dehradun Institute of technology Dehradun, India Suneetcit81@gmail.com Abstract A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a selfconfiguring infrastructure less network of mobile devices connected by wireless links. It is a collection of communication devices or nodes that wish to communicate without any fixed infrastructure and pre-determined organization of available links. The primary challenge in building a MANET is equipping each device to continuously maintain the information required to properly route traffic. Such networks may operate by themselves or may be connected to the larger Internet. The main challenge is the vulnerability to security attacks. A number of challenges like open peer-to-peer network architecture, stringent resource constraints, shared wireless medium, dynamic network topology etc. are posed in MANET. In manet security challenges has become a primary concern to provide secure communication. In this paper, we identify the existent security threats that an ad hoc network faces, the security services required to be achieved and the countermeasures for attacks in each layer. To achieve our goal, we gathering information related to various types of attacks like masquerade, release of message content ,denial of services, replay attacks etc and finding their solutions. So, we can say that the complete security solution requires the prevention, detection and reaction mechanisms applied in MANET. Keywords- MANET, TCP ACK storm, Routing protocols, Cryptography, Communications and data security, Shared wireless channel

Virender Kumar Sharma

Electrical Engineering dept. Bhagwant group of institutions Muzaffarnagar, India Viren_krec@yahoo.com confidentiality, integrity, anonymity, and availability, to mobile users. In such an environment, it may be necessary for one mobile node to enlist other hosts in forwarding a packet to its destination due to the limited transmission range of wireless network interfaces. Each mobile node operates not only as a host but also as a router forwarding packets for other mobile nodes in the network that may not be within the direct transmission range of each other have identified the security issues related to multi-hop network connectivity, discussed the challenges to security design, and reviewed the state of- art security proposals that protect the MANET link- and networklayer operations of delivering packets over the multi-hop wireless channel. In this paper, the emphasis is given only on the link layer and network layer security issues. We focus on the overall security threats and challenges in Mobile ad hoc networks (MANET). There are basically two approaches to protecting MANETs: proactive and reactive. The proactive approach attempts to prevent an attacker from launching attacks in the first place, typically through various cryptographic techniques. In contrast, the reactive approach seeks to detect security threats a posteriori and react accordingly. Due to the absence of a clear line of defense, a complete security solution for MANETs should integrate both approaches and encompass all three components: prevention, detection, and reaction. The following table Table 1.1 summarizes the attacks in each layer in MANET.
Table 1.1: Security Attacks on each layer in MANET Layer Application layer Transport layer Network layer Attacks Repudiation, data corruption Session hijacking, SYN flooding Wormhole, blackhole, Byzantine, flooding, resource consumption, location disclosure attacks Traffic analysis, monitoring, disruption MAC (802.11), WEP weakness Jamming, interceptions, eavesdropping

I.

INTRODUCTION

In recent years mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have received tremendous attention because of their selfconfiguration and self-maintenance capabilities. While early research effort assumed a friendly and cooperative environment and focused on problems such as wireless channel access and multi-hop routing, security has become a primary concern in order to provide protected communication between nodes in a potentially hostile environment. Although security has long been an active research topic in wire line networks, the unique characteristics of MANETs present a new set of nontrivial challenges to security design. These challenges include open network architecture, shared wireless medium, stringent resource constraints, and highly dynamic network topology. Consequently, the existing security solutions for wired networks do not directly apply to the MANET domain. The ultimate goal of the security solutions for MANETs is to provide security services, such as authentication,

Data link layer

Physical layer

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II.

SECURITY ATACKS

A MANET provides network connectivity between mobile nodes over potentially multi-hop wireless channels mainly through link-layer protocols that ensure one-hop connectivity, and network- layer protocols that extend the connectivity to multiple hops. These distributed protocols typically assume that all nodes are cooperative in the coordination process. This assumption is unfortunately not true in a hostile environment. Because cooperation is assumed but not enforced in MANETs, malicious attackers can easily disrupt network operations by violating protocol specifications. The main network-layer operations in MANETs are ad hoc routing and data packet forwarding, which interact with each other and fulfill the functionality of delivering packets from the source to the destination. The ad hoc routing protocols exchange routing messages between nodes and maintain routing states at each node accordingly. Based on the routing states, data packets are forwarded by intermediate nodes along an established route to the destination. Nevertheless, both routing and packet forwarding operations are vulnerable to malicious attacks, leading to various types of malfunction in the network layer. While a comprehensive enumeration of the attacks is out of our scope, such network-layer vulnerabilities generally fall into one of two categories: routing attacks and packet forwarding attacks, based on the target operation of the attacks. The family of routing attacks refers to any action of advertising routing updates that does not follow the specifications of the routing protocol. The specific attack behaviors are related to the routing protocol used by the MANET. In addition to routing attacks, the adversary may launch attacks against packet forwarding operations as well. Such attacks do not disrupt the routing protocol and poison the routing states at each node. Instead, they cause the data packets to be delivered in a way that is intentionally inconsistent with the routing states. For example, the attacker along an established route may drop the packets, modify the content of the packets, or duplicate the packets it has already forwarded. Another type of packet forwarding attack is the denial-of-service (DoS) attack via network-layer packet blasting, in which the attacker injects a large amount of junk packets into the network. These packets waste a significant portion of the network resources, and introduce severe wireless channel contention and network congestion in the MANET. Recent research efforts have also identified the vulnerabilities of the link-layer protocols, especially the de facto standard IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol, for MANETs. It is well known that 802.11 WEP is vulnerable to several types of cryptography attacks due to the misuse of the cryptographic primitives. The 802.11 protocol is also vulnerable to DoS attacks targeting its channel contention and reservation schemes. Moreover, back-offs at the link layer can incur a chain reaction in upper layer protocols using back-off schemes (e.g., TCPs window management). III. THE SECURIT CHALLENGES

International Journal of Computer Information Systems, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2011 have dedicated routers, each mobile node in an ad hoc network may function as a router and forward packets for other nodes. The wireless channel is accessible to both legitimate network users and malicious attackers. As a result, there is no clear line of defense in MANETs from the security design perspective. The boundary that separates the inside network from the outside world becomes blurred. There is no well defined place/infrastructure where we may deploy a single security solution. Moreover, portable devices, as well as the system security information they store, are vulnerable to compromises or physical capture, especially low-end devices with weak protection. Attackers may sneak into the network through these subverted nodes, which pose the weakest link and incur a domino effect of security breaches in the system. The stringent resource constraints in MANETs constitute another nontrivial challenge to security design. The wireless channel is bandwidth- constrained and shared among multiple networking entities. The computation capability of a mobile node is also constrained. For example, some low-end devices, such as PDAs, can hardly perform computation-intensive tasks like asymmetric cryptographic computation. Because mobile devices are typically powered by batteries, they may have very limited energy resources. The wireless medium and node mobility poses far more dynamics in MANETs compared to the wire line networks. The network topology is highly dynamic as nodes frequently join or leave the network, and roam in the network on their own will. The wireless channel is also subject to interferences and errors, exhibiting volatile characteristics in terms of bandwidth and delay. Despite such dynamics, mobile users may request for anytime, anywhere security services as they move from one place to another. The above characteristics of MANETs clearly make a case for building multi-fence security solutions that achieve both broad protection and desirable network performance. First, the security solution should spread across many individual components and rely on their collective protection power to secure the entire network. The security scheme adopted by each device has to work within its own resource limitations in terms of computation capability, memory, communication capacity, and energy supply. Second, the security solution should span different layers of the protocol stack, with each layer contributing to a line of defense. No single-layer solution is possible to thwart all potential attacks. Third, the security solution should thwart threats from both outsiders who launch attacks on the wireless channel and network topology, and insiders who sneak into the system through compromised devices and gain access to certain system knowledge. Fourth, the security solution should encompass all three components of prevention, detection, and reaction that work in concert to guard the system from collapse. Last but not least, the security solution should be practical and affordable in a highly dynamic and resource constrained networking scenario. IV. SOLUTIONS OF DIFFERENT SECURITY THREATS FOR
DIFFERENT LAYERS

One fundamental vulnerability of MANETs comes from their open peer-to-peer architecture. Unlike wired networks that

Security is a primary concern in MANET in order to provide protected communication between the communicating parties. It is essential for basic network functions like routing

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and packet forwarding. Network operation can easily be jeopardized if countermeasures are not embedded into basic network functions at the early stages of their design. Hence, a variety of security mechanisms have been developed to counter malicious attacks. There are two mechanisms which are widely used to protect the MANET from the attackers. - Preventive mechanism: In preventive mechanism, the conventional approaches such as authentication, access control, encryption and digital signature are used to provide first line of defense. Some security modules, such as tokens or smart card that is accessible through PIN, pass phrases or biometrics verification are also used in addition. - Reactive mechanism: Reactive mechanism uses the schemes like intrusion detection system (IDS), cooperation enforcement mechanisms etc. in MANET. Intrusion detection systems are used to detect misuse and anomalies. Cooperation enforcement such as Nuglets, Confidant, CORE and Tokenbased reduce selfish node behavior. A. Solution for Physical Layer Attacks The physical layer of MANET is immune to signal jamming, DoS attack and also some passive attacks. Two spread spectrum technologies can be used to make it difficult to detect or jam signals. Spread spectrum technology changes frequency in a random fashion or spreads it to a wider spectrum which makes the capture of signal difficult. The FHSS (Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum) makes the signal unintelligible duration impulse noise to the eavesdroppers. On the other hand, DSSS (Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum) represents each data bit in the original signal by multiple bits in the transmitted signal through 11-bit Barker code. However, both FHSS and DSSS pose difficulties for the malicious user while trying to intercept the radio signals. To capture and release the content of transmitted signal, the attacker must know frequency band, spreading code and modulation techniques. Still, there is a problem. These mechanisms are secure only when the hopping pattern or spreading code is unknown to the eaves dropper. B. Solution for Link Layer Attacks The security issues that are closely related to link layer are protecting the wireless MAC protocol and providing link-layer security support. One of the vulnerabilities in link layer is its binary exponential back-off scheme. The original 802.11 backoff scheme is slightly modified in that the back-off timer at the sender is provided by the receiver in stead of setting an arbitrary timer value on its own. As mentioned earlier, the threats of resource consumption (using NAV field) is still an open challenge though some schemes have been proposed such as ERA-802.11. Finally, the common known security fault in link layer is the weakness of WEP. Fortunately, the 802.11i/WPA has mended all obvious loopholes in WEP and future countermeasures such as RSN/AESCCMP are also being developed to improve the strength of wireless security.

International Journal of Computer Information Systems, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2011 C. Solution for Network Layer Attacks Network layer is more vulnerable to attacks than all other layers in MANET. A variety of security threats is imposed in this layer. Use of secure routing protocols provides the first line of defense. The active attack like modification of routing messages can be prevented through source authentication and message integrity mechanism. For example, digital signature, message authentication code (MAC), hashed MAC (HMAC), one-way HMAC key chain is used for this purpose. By an unalterable and independent physical metric such as time delay or geographical location can be used to detect wormhole attack. For example, packet leashes are used to combat this attack. IPSec is most commonly used on the network layer in internet that could be used in MANET to provide certain level of confidentiality. The secure routing protocol named ARAN protects from various attacks like modification of sequence number, modification of hop counts, modification of source routes, spoofing, fabrication of source route etc. The research by Deng , et al presents a solution to overcome black hole attack. The solution is to disable the ability to reply in a message of an intermediate node, so all reply messages should be sent out only by the destination node D. Solution for Transport Layer Attacks One way to provide message confidentiality in transport layer is point-to-point or end-to-end communication through data encryption. Though TCP is the main connection oriented reliable protocol in Internet, it does not fit well in MANET. TCP feedback (TCP-F), TCP explicit failure notification (TCPELFN), ad-hoc transmission control protocol (ATCP), and ad hoc transport protocol (ATP) have been developed but none of them covers security issues involved in MANET. Secure Socket Layer (SSL), Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Private Communications Transport (PCT) protocols were designed on the basis of public key cryptography to provide secure communications. TLS/SSL provides protection against masquerade attacks, man-in-middle attacks, rollback attacks, and replay attacks. E. Solution for Application Layer Attacks Viruses, worms, spywares, trozan horses are the common and challenging application layer attacks in any network. Firewall provides protection against some of these attacks. For example, it can provide access control, user authentication, incoming and outgoing packet filtering, network filtering, accounting service etc. Anti-spyware software can detect spyware and malicious programs running on the system. Still using firewall is not enough because in certain situation the attacker even can penetrate firewall and make an attack. Another mechanism, Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is effective to prevent certain attacks such as trying to gain unauthorized access to a service, pretending like a legitimate user etc. The application layer also detects a DoS attack more quickly than the lower layers.

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International Journal of Computer Information Systems, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2011 V CONCLUSION Mobile Ad Hoc Networks have the ability to setup networks on the fly in a harsh environment where it may not possible to deploy a traditional network infrastructure. Whether ad hoc networks have vast potential, still there are many challenges left to overcome. Security is an important feature for deployment of MANET. In this paper, we have overviewed the challenges and solutions of the security threats in mobile ad hoc networks. In our paper, we present a variety of attacks related to different layers and find that network layer is most vulnerable than all other layers in MANET. This isolation of attacks on the basis of different layers makes easy to understand about the security attacks in ad hoc networks.. The security services can be achieved through following the preventive and reactive solutions on the basis of particular attack. In addition, we can say that security must be ensured for the entire system since a single weak point may give the attacker the opportunity to gain the access of the system and perform malicious tasks. Everyday, the attackers are trying to find out the new vulnerability in MANET. REFERENCES
[1] K. Sanzgiri, B. Dahill, B.N. Levine, C. Shields, E.M. Belding-Royer, Secure routing protocol for ad hoc networks, In Proc. of 10th IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols, Dept. of Comput. Sci., California Univ., Santa Barbara, CA, USA. 12-15 Nov. 2002, Page(s): 78- 87, ISSN: 1092-1648 [2] B. Wu, J. Chen, J. Wu, M. Cardei, A Survey of Attacks and Countermeasures in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Florida Atlantic University, H. Yang, H. Luo, F. Ye, S. Lu, L. Zhang, Security in mobile ad hoc networks: challenges and solutions, In proc. IEE Wireless Communication, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA; volume- 11,38- 47, ISSN: 1536-1284 IEEE Std. 802.11, Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications, 1997. B. Schneier, Secret and Lies, Digital Security in a Networked World, Wiley, 2000. Y. Hu, A. Perrig, and D. Johnson, Ariadne: A Secure On-demand Routing Protocol for Ad Hoc Networks, ACM MOBICOM, 2002. M. Zapata, and N. Asokan, Securing Ad Hoc Routing Protocols, ACM WiSe, 2002. B. Dahill et al., A Secure Protocol for Ad Hoc Networks, IEEE ICNP, 2002. AUTHORS PROFILE

[3]

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Mr. Suneet kumar received his M.Tech degree from Rajasthan Vidyapeeth University, Rajasthan, India in 2006. and Persuing Ph.D degree from Bhagwant University, Ajmer, Rajasthan, India. This author is the member of International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security , USA Technical Review Committee and Journal of Information Technology Education, California, USA [Editorial Review Board Committee.

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