ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the security vulnerabilities in multi-hop wireless networks that are relevant to Wireless mesh networks (WMNs). WMNs, being multi-hop wireless networks, are prone to most of the security attacks on multi-hop wireless networks. External attacks are launched by intruders who are not part of the WMN and gain illegitimate access to the network. Link layer jamming attacks are more complex compared to blind physical layer radio jamming attacks. The attacks on the network layer can be divided into control plane attacks and data plane attacks and can be active or passive in nature. Rushing attacks exploit the route discovery mechanism of on-demand routing protocols. Data plane attacks are primarily launched by the selfish and malicious nodes in the network and lead to performance degradation or denial of service for the legitimate user data traffic. The security service of data confidentiality leads to the protection against passive eavesdropping attack.
