Securing AODV Protocol against BlackholeAttacks

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks are autonomous and decentralized wireless systems. MANETs consist of mobile nodes that are free in moving in and out in the network.The nodes can form arbitrary topologies depending on their connectivity with each other in the network. These nodes have the ability to configure themselves and because of their self-configuration ability, they can be deployed urgently without the need of any infrastructure. The MANETS sufferfrom constraints in power, storage and computational resources.In addition, the pervasiveness, ubiquity and the inherentwireless nature, warrant appropriate security provisions inthese networks that becomes difficult to support, amidst the lackof sufficient resource strengths. As a result, the MANETs aremore vulnerable to various communications security relatedattacks.In this paper, therefore, we attempt to focus on analyzing andimproving the security of one of the popular routing protocol forMANET’s viz. the Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV)routing protocol. Our focus specifically, is on ensuring thesecurity against the Blackhole Attacks. We proposemodifications to the AODV protocol and justify the solutionwith appropriate implementation and simulation using NS-2.33.Our analysis shows significant improvement in Packet DeliveryRatio (PDR) of AODV in presence of Blackhole attacks, withmarginal rise in average end-to-end