Malicious node prevention and mitigation in MANETs using a hybrid security model

Mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) has got tremendous success and attention due to its self-maintenance and self-configuration properties or behavior. Based on wired and wireless networks, the network topology of MANETs changes rapidly by means of routing attacks. Hence, providing security to this infrastructure-less network is a major issue. The routing protocols for ad-hoc networks cope well with the dynamically changing topology but are not designed to accommodate defense against malicious attacker. Malicious nodes have opportunities to modify or discard routing information or advertise fake routes to attract user data to go through themselves. In this article, we discuss a hybrid technique using anonymity, one-way trapdoor protocol, hash functions, and elliptic curve cryptographic to mitigate attacks in the MANET. The simulation is carried on NS-2 and the simulation results are dissected on different system execution measurements, for example, packet send and received, packet dropped, average network throughput, end-to-end delay, and packet delivery ratio.