Performance Analysis of Ad-Hoc Networks Under Black Hole Attacks

Abstract

A wireless ad-hoc network is a temporary network set up by wireless nodes usually moving randomly and communicating without a network infrastructure. Due to security vulnerabilities of the routing protocols, however, wireless ad-hoc networks may be unprotected against attacks by the malicious nodes. In this study we investigated the effects of Black Hole attacks on the network performance. We simulated black hole attacks in Network Simulator 2 (ns-2) and measured the packet loss in the network with and without a black hole. We also proposed a simple solution against black hole attacks. Our solution improved the network performance in the presence of a black hole by about 19%. © 2007 IEEE.