DEFENDING BLACKHOLE ATTACKS IN MOBILE AD HOC NETWORKS USING NON-ZERO GAME THEORY

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are an infrastructure less self configuring networks of mobile devices connected by an open access wireless links. The MANETs are finding more likely importance due to their flexibility, ease and speed with which these networks can be deployed as well as reconfigured. This allows the use of this kind of networks in special circumstances, such as military battle field, natural disaster recovery and emergency medical services and etc. As MANETs lack a centralized infrastructure, they are exposed to a lot of attacks such as blackhole attack, wormhole attack and etc. So the security is the main concern for these networks. Especially secure routing is important given the fact that potential attackers aim to disrupt the appropriate operation of the routing protocol within a MANET. In this paper we propose an ad hoc routing protocol called GTASA (Game theoretic approach to secure AODV) protocol to defend MANET against blackhole attacks. GTASA is based on the concept of non-cooperative non-zero game theory and it outperforms AODV in terms of malicious dropped packets when blackhole nodes exist within the MANET. Our simulations were implemented by means of the popular network simulator NS-2