Page 2 Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2865 Edited by G. Goos ...

Preventing Replay Attacks for Secure Routingin Ad Hoc NetworksJane Zhen and Sampalli SrinivasDalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada, B3H 1W5{zhen,srini}@cs.dal.caAbstract. The design of secure routing techniques is a crucial and challengingrequirement in mobile ad hoc networking. This is due to the factthat the highly dynamic nature of the ad hoc nodes, their limited transmissionrange, and their reliance on an implicit trust model to routepackets make the routing protocols inherently susceptible to attacks. Wepropose a solution to prevent two important types of replay attacks onthe Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol. Ourtechnique is based on strengthening the neighbor authentication mechanismby a simple extension to the AODV protocol. Analysis of thetechnique indicates that it achieves security with little overhead.1 IntroductionAd hoc networking is currently becoming a popular wireless technology for manyapplications such as personal area networking, disaster relief and rescue operations,and a variety of military, business and scientific applications. The attractivefeatures of such mobile ad hoc networks (MANET’s) include automaticself-configuration and self-maintenance, quick and inexpensive deployment, andthe lack of the need for fixed network infrastructures or centralized administration[1]. However, along side the advantages, a number of design challenges inMANET’s have emerged. One such crucial requirement is the design of securerouting protocols. In such networks, the highly dynamic nature of the nodescan cause the network’s topology to change rapidly and unpredictably. Furthermore,wireless transmissions from each node are limited in their range. Due tothese reasons, the nodes must cooperate amongst themselves to exchange routinginformation and most routing algorithms for ad hoc networks rely on animplicit trust model to exchange information between neighbors. As a consequence,MANET routing protocols are vulnerable to a variety of attacks suchas eavesdropping, denial of service, packet injection, traffic analysis and replayattacks [2]-[18].In this paper, we propose a solution to prevent two types of replay attackson the Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV), which is currently on theverge of becoming a standard routing protocol for ad hoc networks. The firsttype of replay attack is the wormhole attack, in which attackers tunnel RouteRequest (RREQ) packets from one node to another through a fast link such thatS. Pierre, M. Barbeau, and E. Kranakis (Eds.): ADHOC-NOW 2003, LNCS 2865, pp. 140–150, 2003.c○ Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003