Analysing the impact of black hole attack on DSR-based MANET: The hidden network destructor

Black hole attack targets the network layer of the protocol stack by disrupting the routing service. In this type of attack, an adversary aims to disrupt the packets destined to a target node in the network. It achieves this by claiming that it has the freshest and shortest path to a target node. It then redirects all packets destined to a target node to itself and drops them. Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) is a Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) reactive routing protocol which establishes routes on demand and therefore more susceptible to black hole attack. This paper analyses the black hole attack on DSR-based MANET. The analysis is performed by simulating DSR-based network in NS-2 and introducing the black hole attack to the network. The graphs obtained from simulations indicate that DSR-based MANETs' performance deteriorates when black hole attack is launched against them.