ReverseRoute: An Application-Layer Scheme for Detecting Blackholes in MANET Using Mobile Agents

Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs) are prone to many security attacks. One such attack is the blackhole attack. This work proposes a simple and effective application layer based intrusion detection scheme in a MANET to detect blackholes. The proposed algorithm utilizes mobile agents (MA) and wtracert (modified version of Traceroute for MANET) to detect multiple black holes in a DSR protocol based MANET. Use of MAs ensure that no modifications need to be carried out in the underlying routing algorithms or other lower layers. Simulation results show successful detection of single and multiple blackhole nodes, using the proposed detection mechanism, across varying mobility speeds of the nodes.