V.R.Nisha, S.Rajeswari
Recently, mobile ad hoc networks became a hot research topic among researchers due to their flexibility and independence of network infrastructures, such as base stations. Due to unique characteristics, such as dynamic network topology, limited bandwidth, and limited battery power, routing in a MANET is a particularly challenging task compared to a conventional network.Since MANET assumes a trusted environment for routing, security is a major issue. In this paper we analyze the vulnerabilities of a pro-active routing protocol called optimized link state routing (OLSR) against a specific type of denial-of-service (DOS) attack called node isolation attack and replay attack. Analyzing the attack, we propose a mechanism called Enhanced OLSR (EOLSR) protocol which is a trust based technique to secure the OLSR nodes against the attack. Our technique is capable of finding whether a node is advertising correct topology information or not by verifying its Hello packets, thus detecting node isolation attacks and including timestamp to avoid replay attack.