Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) and Intrusion Detection:

Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is a wireless network with nodes moving in free manner. MANET is infrastructure-less network and is self configured. It has some applications such as conference participants networking and emergency communications.

MANET is suffering from some limitations regarding its wireless and mobile nature. These limitations represented in securing the ongoing communications against vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities represented in intrusions, Denial of service, spoofing, selfish node, Eavesdroppers, Malicious nodes, etc. However, many solutions have been proposed to overcome MANET’s security issues, but unfortunately the threats still facing MANET. 

Intrusion detection is one of the methods used in MANET to detect any unauthorized activity in the network. Detecting such activities could mitigate the problems that may occur due to some malicious activities. Intrusion detection usually considered as second line of defense against attackers, where first line is intrusion prevision. In general, securing MANET still an open research area and needs some attention to make this technology safe and worth using.

Virtual Private Network (VPN):

 

Two or more devices on private network may communicate with each other in secure way. But devices communicate through public network such as Internet is vulnerable. Thus, a secure line between communication endpoints is needed, and here VPN appears to overcome this problem and secure the connection. Virtual Private Network (VPN) uses cryptographic algorithm to encapsulate the data packets going from one side to another over public network. Usually endpoint on both sides of communication tunnel use authentication technique before start VPN. As vulnerabilities are versatile such as spoofing, sniffing packets, etc, VPN uses many protocols to keep security high. Some of these protocols are; IPsec, Secure Shell (SSH), Layer Two Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) and many others.