Protecting Mobile Ad Hoc Networks from Black Hole Attacks?

Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) is a communication that network that is made up of nodes that are self configured without having the need for fixed infrastructure. The nodes are vulnerable to various kinds of attacks due to their mobility and resource constrained nature. One such attack is black hole attack. In this attack a compromised node advertises itself to have a shortest path for sending data packets to destination. This way the malicious node deceives other nodes and obtains sensitive information. In this paper we proposed an authentication mechanism based on the solution provided recently by Luo et al. We built a prototype system that simulates the black hole attacks on MANET and the prevention measures. The prototype demonstrates the proof of concept pertaining to protecting MANET from black hole attacks. The simulation results are encouraging.