In
computer networking
A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ma ...
, a packet drop attack or blackhole attack is a type of
denial-of-service attack
In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connect ...
in which a router that is supposed to relay
packet
Packet may refer to:
* A small container or pouch
** Packet (container), a small single use container
** Cigarette packet
** Sugar packet
* Network packet, a formatted unit of data carried by a packet-mode computer network
* Packet radio, a form ...
s instead
discards Discards are the portion of a catch of fish which is not retained on board during commercial fishing operations and is returned, often dead or dying, to the sea. The practice of discarding is driven by economic and political factors; fish which are ...
them. This usually occurs from a router becoming compromised from a number of different causes. One cause mentioned in research is through a denial-of-service attack on the router using a known DDoS tool.
Because packets are routinely dropped from a lossy network, the
packet drop attack is very hard to detect and prevent.
The malicious router can also accomplish this attack selectively, e.g. by dropping packets for a particular network destination, at a certain time of the day, a packet every ''n'' packets or every ''t'' seconds, or a randomly selected portion of the packets. If the malicious router attempts to drop all packets that come in, the attack can actually be discovered fairly quickly through common networking tools such as traceroute. Also, when other routers notice that the compromised router is dropping all traffic, they will generally begin to remove that router from their forwarding tables and eventually no traffic will flow to the attack. However, if the malicious router begins dropping packets on a specific time period or over every ''n'' packets, it is often harder to detect because some traffic still flows across the network.
The packet drop attack can be frequently deployed to attack
wireless ad hoc network
A wireless ad hoc network (WANET) or mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a decentralized type of wireless network. The network is ad hoc because it does not rely on a pre-existing infrastructure, such as routers in wired networks or access points ...
s. Because wireless networks have a much different architecture than that of a typical wired network, a host can broadcast that it has the shortest path towards a destination. By doing this, all traffic will be directed to the host that has been compromised, and the host is able to
drop packets at will.
Also over a
mobile ad hoc network
A wireless ad hoc network (WANET) or mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a decentralized type of wireless network. The network is ad hoc because it does not rely on a pre-existing infrastructure, such as routers in wired networks or access points ...
, hosts are specifically vulnerable to collaborative attacks where multiple hosts will become compromised and deceive the other hosts on the network.
See also
*
Black hole (networking)
In networking, a black hole refers to a place in the network where incoming or outgoing traffic is silently discarded (or "dropped"), without informing the source that the data did not reach its intended recipient.
When examining the topology o ...
References
Packets (information technology)
Routing
Denial-of-service attacks
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