Wireless Networks and Security
Contents
Attacks against the routing protocols 3
Introduction
The computer networks require several protocols so that they could work properly without disturbance issues. One such protocol is a routing protocol that allows communication of routers with each other for information distribution. In other words, routing protocols are used by the computer network, so that routing information is distributed on routing devices [1]. The information travels from the sender to the receiver through the selected routes.
Furthermore, information exchange on computer networks occurs through data packets which are forwarded through routers. For these data traveling, different routing protocols with algorithms could be implemented to achieve the shortest path. However, purpose here to travel information from the sender to receiver in the simple manger on computer networks. Hence, the objective of this report is to understand routing protocols in the ad-hoc network offering energy efficiency, security, and Quality of Service.
This report will analyze geographic routing protocol (GRP) that is completely dependent on the geographical position of information. Furthermore, source and destination communicate with each other through geographical location rather than its network address. Additionally, geographical routing allows nodes to have one-hop connectivity so that scalability for computing network is obtained, respectively [2]. Hence, this report covers a geographic routing protocol and its analysis for being efficient, secure, and service quality. This report is divided into sections such as working principles, attacks, and countermeasures for these protocol use.
Motivation
Security has become a bigger concern on the computer network. Whether it is an organization or home network security over personal information is an important issue. For instance, network protection from Denial of Service Attacks, unauthorized access, and network integrity maintenance are some security problems [3]. Therefore, routing protocols also goes through which same issues. It affects the network performance and brings problems of cybercrime. Whereas, routing of information has issues for data reliability, timeliness, error rates, network lifetime expansion, and scalability of systems [4]. Therefore, routing protocols selection is one of the major aspects of computer network management. Hence, a protocol should have the quality of being a secure, efficient, and good quality of service. However, another issue with QoS is buffering size in data traffic that takes time for loading [5]. Therefore, choosing an appropriate protocol has become a concern for anyone. It is essential to analyze the routing protocols present currently for making them better on the computer network. There is no guarantee of how it could cause different problems for the network, such as security attacks, configuration conflicts, and network performance degradation [3]. These attacks will hamper the information sending and retrieval on the routes and thus require better analysis and understanding. In other words, the routing protocol requires a proper study before even considering them for an organization or home network.
Routing Protocols Analysis
Detailed technical explanation
It has been clear that the GRP protocol uses geographical location to exchange information from source to destination rather than network address. However, GRP protocol’s working offers better performance for a packet traveling through a position basis []. There are different GRP protocols as per their positioning and categorized accordingly. Two of them are quite popular, named Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (GRSR) and Geographic and Energy Aware Routing (GEAR) protocol. Each has a different technical explanation and works as per their positioning of packets from one place to another.
- Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (GPSR)
The selection of the shortest path has become a major concern on computer networks. However, GPSR uses the geographical position of the router and sends information accordingly. This protocol uses a greedy forwarding method to forward packets on the node near to destination. In contrast, if the greedy path is absent, then protocol implements the packet in a perimeter mode [6]. Hence, the GSPR protocol uses the shortest node based on it’s nearest location and send information quickly. The source node is fixed and travels packet, which is nearest to the destination first.
GSPR Technique Adopted from [6]
- Geographic and Energy Aware Routing (GEAR)
In this protocol, energy conservation is taken as a way so that data packets could route from one place to another. The working is easy, as the packet is chosen based on energy awareness and sends to the destination location [7]. Hence, this protocol is completely based on energy awareness of a router’s position. The source node looks after energy coming highest among all nodes and travels to the highest energy zone destination.
GEAR Technique Adopted from [7]
Analysis of the positive and negative point
Positives
- The protocol is simple and does not bother with network addresses.
- It is highly scalable and offers some transition of information from the sender to the destination.
- GSPR protocol offers lower computational complexity as compared with traditional routing protocols [9].
- Recovers quickly for shortest distance through greedy forwarding methods.
- Provide network with consistent traveling between routes.
Negatives
- Impossible to move information from source to destination due to arbitrary nodes.
- The header of data packets changes multiple times in GRP protocol.
- Geographical routing produces errors in data, which makes network delay and latency issues very common [8].
Security issues
Denial of Service Attacks
DOS attack is very commonly seen in routing protocols. GRP protocol also goes through a DoS attack very often and causes information loss. In this DoS attack, the cybercriminal makes a machine resource unavailable for some time [10].
Additionally, users are stuck with service issues and suffer from a major loss. In this time, the offensive perpetrator uses all the personal information of that particular user. Therefore, it is the most common attack that occurs on the routing protocol algorithms. In context with the GRP protocol, it occurs when information is passed from the sender to destination sources.
Unauthorized Access
The unauthorized access occurs when someone acquires a computer system to access personal information, programs, server, services, and websites through password and username details. Therefore, on GRP protocol, such access could happen and destroy someone’s personal information. The information exchange that occurs based on positioning also brings different risks. For example, GRP protocol, if it has any security flaws, then it is exploited by preparators through unauthorized system access [11]. Therefore, network issues in the routing protocol is another bigger concern to consider.
Attacks against the Routing protocols
There are several attacks against routing protocols that could occur whenever a particular protocol such as GRP is implemented. Following attacks are common and could be seen in protocols.
Goal-Oriented Attacks
The goal-oriented attacks occur when there is some objective of affecting the networks. It has divided into two categories, such as active and passive attacks. While the passive attack has the intention of corrupting data and stealing it for personal use. In this attack, the network traffic is monitored, and personal information of the user is stolen. Different examples show passive attacks like traffic analysis, communication monitoring, decryption of traffic on computer networks, and capturing for authenticated user data [12]. Hence, passive attacks are loosely based on using sensitive information of users for other attacks.
On the contrary, the goal of active attacks to take overall control on computer networks. For instance, some passive attacks are spoofing, wormhole, man-in-middle attack, blackhole, DoS, and selective forwarding on data []. Hence, both have different goals and could be manipulated on the computer network to corrupt it completely.
Layer Oriented Attacks
The attacks are also arranged as per the network layers, such as physical, data link, network, transport, and application.
Layered Oriented Attacks Adopted from [12]
Modification Attacks
In these types of attacks, modifications are done on the different nodes present on the networks. For example, a malicious node will create a disturbance on a computer network by creating better routes as well as message field alteration [13]. This example could happen in the GRP protocol because modification to the greedy source will get changed suddenly. As a result, the whole network will have a disturbance and produce a lack of information exchange securely and safely.
Personified Attacks
The personified attacks are also known as spoofing, which occurs when malicious viruses get attached to the IP address [13]. However, the possibility of such attacks is completely low in geographic routing protocols. Since the information travels from packets through positions rather than network addresses. Still, there is a possibility of spoofing through other mechanisms on the network.
Attacks’ countermeasure
There are several countermeasures for the attacks that have the possibility of routing protocols. Some of them are suggested below, which could offer preventive measures.
- Firewalls: Firewall software that provides security mechanisms on the network from unauthorized users. Especially, host-based firewalls are recommended as they keep control of incoming and outgoing traffic effectively [14]. Software-based firewalls help reduce issues that occur on network traffic while passing data packets from the source to the destination.
- Intrusion prevention systems: One of the common attacks is the modification of source nodes present on the network. However, to remove such attacks, IPS seems highly capable and effective. For example, IPS protects the most vulnerable source node by blocking content, which is highly malicious and changes the node positioning [15]. Therefore, IPS is a security mechanism that protects nodes present on a computer network.
- Secured Routing mechanism: Another countermeasure is using authentication and encryption methods such as asymmetric and symmetric cryptography so that modification and personification becomes easier [15]. Therefore, mechanism cryptography uses coded language to send information on computer networks. Hence, it seems approachable for achieving better data transmission on the network.
Conclusion
In short, the purpose of this report was analysis for a standard routing protocol to transfer information through data packets. The geographic routing protocol was chosen due to being the independent transfer of information through geographical location instead of network address dependency. The motivation for choosing protocol is security over information. The security is vulnerable due to different attacks such as hacking, Denial of Service Attacks, unauthorized access, and network integrity maintenance. Whereas, information buffering is another concern that hampers the transfer of information in a negative manner.
Additionally, routing protocol analysis identified two ways in which positioning could be done. Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (GRSR) and Geographic and Energy Aware Routing (GEAR) protocol are two methods that make it easy. It was understood that greedy protocol looks into the nearest path for the transfer of information. While Energy protocol looks into router’s energy awareness. Further, a positive aspect of using this protocol is independent nature from network addresses. However, the negative aspect was latency and delay issues in sending of information.
Further, routing protocols have attacked, such as goal-oriented, layer oriented, modification, and personified. Hence, the report suggested some effective countermeasures against harm to data transfer over routing protocols. Some of them are firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, and secured routing mechanism.
References
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