In an ad hoc network, mobile computers (or nodes) cooperate to forward packets for each other, allowing nodes to communicate beyond their direct wireless transmission range. Many proposed routing protocols for ad hoc networks operate in an on-demand fashion, as on-demand routing protocols have been shown to often have lower overhead and faster reaction time than other types of routing based on periodic (proactive) mechanisms. Significant attention recently has been devoted to developing secure routing protocols for ad hoc networks, including a number of secure ondemand routing protocols, that defend against a variety of possible attacks on network routing. In this paper, we present the rushing attack, a new attack that results in denial-of-service when used against all previous on-demand ad hoc network routing protocols. For example, DSR, AODV, and secure protocols based on them, such as Ariadne, ARAN, and SAODV, are unable to discover routes longer than two hops when subject to this...
Yih-Chun Hu, Adrian Perrig, David B. Johnson