Routing Attacks in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks - A Survey

Wireless ad hoc network is a special kind of wireless network with a dynamic topology consist of self organized nodes. The nodes in the networks are randomly and frequently. Due to the self organizing and decentralized capabilities, ad hoc networks are used for a wide range of civilian and military applications. Wireless ad hoc networks are an open environment and it is susceptible to many security attacks due to the inherent features. Attacks in the wireless ad hoc environments are classified under two categories, active and passive attacks. Passive attacker eavesdrop the information transmitted through the networks, and it does not introduced any modifications in the networks. But an active attacker can modify or inject unwanted information in the packets and routing table in the networks. Active attacks are severely affected the network performance. This paper provides an overview of some well known routing attacks in the wireless ad hoc networks.