Security in Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETS)

Introduction

Today one of the major problems that the ad-hoc network is facing is the Security (Yi, Dai, Zhang, Zhong, 2010). Ad-hoc network requires the robust security schemes for transmitting information over the network. As the ad-hoc network are having dynamic topology, mobile nodes, wireless transmission media there the privacy and security of the node is to be maintained. There are two levels of security schemes that can be applied to the network: Low Level and High Level. The low level security scheme is applied to the network where the security has to be kept of the minimum level. The main focus is the low level scheme is to make the network secure applying security mechanisms. This implies key exchange, privacy, capture node attack, secured routing, trust establishment etc. The High level security is implied to the network where it is necessary to make network secure but also to identify the intruder or attacker. There are various mechanism that are applied in the high level security scheme such as intrusion detection, secure data aggregation, secure group policy etc.

As the security level are of two types the attacks is also classified in two categories active attack and passive attack. In the active attack the attacker listen, monitors and modifies the data packet according to his/her interest. There are various type of attack included in the active attack such as broadcasting fake information, routing attacks etc. The second type of attack is passive attack in which the attacker monitors and modifies the exchange packet. It includes the attack against the privacy of the node. This includes the attack such as eavesdropping, traffic analysis etc. The security of the network becomes more important because the nodes are mobile in nature and can affect the network more prominently then the fixed attacker node. Security mechanisms that are applies to the network must assure that when the malicious node are detected then the normal node are to be secured from them and the malicious link must be blocked.