Comparative analysis of low rate denial of service attack in MANETs

Abstract

Mobile MANETs (MANET) is example of wireless mobile communication. Network consists of mobile nodes that are multi-hop, self-configured connected by wireless links. Each node is free to move randomly and change their positions arbitrarily. So, the topology of network may change frequently. In MANETs dynamic mobile nodes are stationed in such a manner that communication between nodes does not rely on any existing network infrastructure. These networks are highly vulnerable to various security threats. One of major thread to current networks security is Denial of service (DoS) attacks. In this type of attacks, a single attacker or group of attacker try to gain access to network in term of interrupting legitimate user to serve by an application running on a mobile node. This thesis focuses on detection and mitigation of flood type attack that results DoS attack in wireless network. There is new flavour of Dos attack, also known as Low Rate DoS attack. A victim node fails to detect this attack due to very low average rate of attack. In this attack, attacker sends Low Rate network traffic periodically to target node. So far, there is not any solution to counter Low Rate DoS attack without degrading the performance of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). A node based solution to mitigate the effect of Low Rate DoS attack discussed in this work. As per follow approach includes Random Early Detection (RED) variants Robust-RED (RRED) for controlling congestion control at network layer and TCP variants Selective Acknowledgement (SACK) at transport layer are used to detect mitigate effect of Low Rate DoS. Also, analyse the result these variants during attack. The solution provides rapid detection and mitigation procedure during attack.