NONACK in wireless ad hoc network

Abstract

A wireless ad hoc sensor network (WSN) is made up of a number of geographically spread apart sensors each with a reasonable amount of signal processing and data networking ability coupled with wireless communication. One of the major challenges wireless sensor networks face today is security. Denial of service (DoS) attack is meant not only for the adversary's attempt to subvert, disrupt, or destroy a network, but also for any event that diminishes a network's capability to provide a service. This paper explores resource depletion attack in a cooperative manner and increasing traffic on the routing layer protocol. The ease of carrying out a NONACK (Noose Noose attack) and the difficulty in its detection makes all examined protocols very susceptible to it. The worst case scenarios can see an upsurge in the network-wide usage by a factor of O(N2), N being the number of network nodes.