Securing Blackhole Attacks in MANETs using Modified Sequence Number in AODV Routing Protocol

Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) is a dynamic network between mobile nodes for sharing of information and is popular for its infrastructure-less design. Due to the lack of central governing body, however, various security threats come forward in MANETs in comparison to its infrastructure based counterparts. Blackhole attack is one of the most challenging security issues present in MANETs. Blackhole attack reduces network efficiency considerably by disrupting the flow of data between source and destination. In this paper, we propose an algorithm which is based on the technique of changing the sequence number present in control packets, in particular the Route Reply Packets (RREP) in widely used Ad-Hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol, in order to identify the blackhole nodes and thereby to minimize the data loss by discarding the route with such Blackhole nodes. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the legacy Intrusion Detection System (IDS) provisioned for AODV.