Security of Routing Protocols in MANETs: A Survey

A mobile ad hoc network or MANET is a wireless network that is dynamic and can be formed without any fixed and pre existing infrastructure whereas each node can play the role of a router. Security is an important requirement in mobile ad hoc networks. This paper deals with two aspects of the security in MANETs one is security attacks and the other is security in routing protocols of MANET. The important purpose of the description of security aspects of MANET is to implement security including authentication, confidentiality, integrity, anonymity, and availability of services to the mobile users. In MANETs there are both legitimate and malicious nodes. In this paper, various important security issues in MANET have also been analyzed. The various routing attacks, such as black hole, gray hole, impersonation, worm hole etc. are reviewed in this paper. These attacks are one of the reasons of major problems in MANETs.