Securing mobile ad hoc networks using danger theory-based artificial immune algorithm

Maha Abdelhaq; Raed Alsaqour; Shawkat Abdelhaq

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0120715

Securing mobile ad hoc networks using danger theory-based artificial immune algorithm

PLoS One. 2015 May 6;10(5):e0120715. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0120715. eCollection 2015.

Authors

Maha Abdelhaq¹, Raed Alsaqour¹, Shawkat Abdelhaq²

Affiliations

¹ School of Computer Science, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), 43600, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia.
² Business Administration Faculty, Indiana Wesleyan University, 4201 S. Washington St, Marion, Indiana 46953, United States of America.

Abstract

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a set of mobile, decentralized, and self-organizing nodes that are used in special cases, such as in the military. MANET properties render the environment of this network vulnerable to different types of attacks, including black hole, wormhole and flooding-based attacks. Flooding-based attacks are one of the most dangerous attacks that aim to consume all network resources and thus paralyze the functionality of the whole network. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to investigate the capability of a danger theory-based artificial immune algorithm called the mobile dendritic cell algorithm (MDCA) to detect flooding-based attacks in MANETs. The MDCA applies the dendritic cell algorithm (DCA) to secure the MANET with additional improvements. The MDCA is tested and validated using Qualnet v7.1 simulation tool. This work also introduces a new simulation module for a flooding attack called the resource consumption attack (RCA) using Qualnet v7.1. The results highlight the high efficiency of the MDCA in detecting RCAs in MANETs.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Floods*
Neural Networks, Computer*
Risk Assessment
Software

Grants and funding

This research was supported in part by the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia & University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Malaysia under the research Grant numbers: FRGS/1/2012/SG05/UKM/02/7 and DIP-2014-037. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.