Mitigation of flooding disruption attacks in hierarchical OLSR networks

Gimer Cervera (1) , Michel Barbeau (1) , Joaquin Garcia Alfaro (2) , Evangelos Kranakis (1)

1 School of Computer Science (Carleton, Ottawa)
2 LUSSI - Département Logique des Usages, Sciences sociales et Sciences de l'Information

The Hierarchical Optimized Link State Routing (HOLSR) protocol was designed to improve scalability of heterogeneous Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs). HOLSR is derived from the OLSR protocol and implements Multipoint Relay (MPR) nodes as a flooding mechanism for distributing control information. Unlike OLSR, nodes are organized in clusters and implement Hierarchical Topology Control (HTC) messages for inter-cluster communications. Nevertheless, HOLSR was designed without security measures. Therefore, a misbehaving node can affect the topology map acquisition process by interrupting the flooding of control information or disturbing the MPR selection process. We present a taxonomy of flooding disruption attacks, that affect the topology map acquisition process in HOLSR networks, and preventive mechanisms to mitigate the effect of this kind of attacks.

Mots clés: OLSR; Security; Flooding mechanisms; MPR

Domaines: Cryptographie et sécurité [cs.CR]

Gimer Cervera, Michel Barbeau, Joaquin Garcia Alfaro, Evangelos Kranakis. Mitigation of flooding disruption attacks in hierarchical OLSR networks. CNSR 2011: 9th Annual Communication Networks and Services Research Conference, May 2011, Ottawa, Canada. pp.167-174, ⟨10.1109/CNSR.2011.32⟩. ⟨hal-00623195⟩