Security study of AODV for MANETS

MANETs routing protocols are being developed without having security in mind. In most of them it is assumed that all the nodes in the network are friendly and trusted. I consider the problem of incorporating security mechanism into routing protocols for ad hoc networks. I look at AODV (Ah-hoc On-demand Distance Vector) in detail and try to check possibility to develop a security mechanism to protect its routing information.

AODV is one of the widely used routing protocols that is currently undergoing extensive research and development. AODV is reactive which means that it builds routes only when they are first needed. AODV is based on distance vector routing, but the updates are shared not on a periodic basis but on an as per requirement basis. The control packet contains a hop count and sequence number field that identifies the freshness of routing updates. As these fields are mutable, it creates a potential vulnerability that is frequently exploited by malicious nodes to advertise better routes. Similarly, transmission of routing updates also discloses vital information about network topology, which is again a potential security hazard. So here I will try to focus first on various possible security flaws and then on possible security solutions of AODV.