Performance analysis of mobile ad hoc networks under flooding attacks

Due to their characteristics of dynamic topology, wireless channels and limited resources, mobile ad hoc networks are particularly vulnerable to a denial of service (DoS) attacks launched by intruders. The effects of flooding attacks in network simulation 2 (NS2) and measured performance parameters are investigated, including packet loss ratio, average delay, throughput and average number of hops under different numbers of attack nodes, flooding frequency, network bandwidth and network size. Simulation results show that with the increase of the flooding frequency and the number of attack nodes, network performance sharply drops. But when the frequency of flooding attacks or the number of attack nodes is greater than a certain value, performance degradation tends to a stable value.