Assessing Implications of Black Hole Attacks on VANET Performance

VANET safety and security are critical for optimizing road traffic and reducing accidents. Vehicles travel between locations on a dynamic basis, and because there is minimum level of security architecture in place, routing protocol are open to multiple types of attacks. Black hole attacks are one of these risks; they affect the safety applications of VANET by allowing malicious nodes to enter the wireless network and selectively delete incoming packets. In this study, we use NS3 simulations to examine how black hole attack affect vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Our experiments involve comparing network performance metrics, including throughput and delay, under two scenarios: with and without black hole attacks. By introducing malicious nodes that selectively drop or manipulate packets, we emulate real-world security threats faced by VANETs. Our findings demonstrate that the attacks double the average end-to-end delay, increase packet loss ratio, and decrease network throughput in a VANET environment. These results highlight how urgently trustworthy data transmission in VANET environments is required for reliable communication in intelligent transport systems.