Simulative Survey of Flooding Attacks in Intermittently Connected Vehicular Delay Tolerant Networks

Abstract

Vehicular Adhoc Networks (VANETs) are an emerging and promising technology that enables vehicles to communicate with roadside units (RSUs) and other vehicles. VANETs contribute to improved traffic efficiency, accident safety, and entertainment services for passengers and drivers. However, VANETs face limitations in areas with intermittent connectivity. To address this scenario, researchers have proposed a specialized use-case known as intermittently-connected-vehicular delay-tolerant-networks (ICVDTNs), which are a subset of delay-tolerant-networks (DTNs). Security is less explored area compare to routing. Malicious nodes pose significant threats by launching selective packet drops, fake/bogus packets, and flood attacks, depleting limited resources such as bandwidth and node buffer space. Consequently, these attacks result in low message delivery ratios and high message loss ratios. Among these attacks, flood attacks are particularly challenging in ICV-DTNs. various algorithms have been proposed to mitigate flood attacks, but previous approaches have exhibited shortcomings. Firstly, previously proposed algorithms lack efficiency in terms of detection time and accuracy. Secondly, the extent of resource waste or savings after implementing these schemes has not been adequately demonstrated, with no simulation results quantifying the amount of buffer consumption. Additionally, prior algorithms lack a comprehensive definition of flood attacks, which represents a critical research question in this field. To address these gaps, this article not only proposed a unique taxonomy of the flooding attacks but also evaluate various algorithms on diverse parameters. The article also contribute open research areas for the community to investigate the nitty gritty of flooding attacks in ICV-DTNs.