Authenticated routing for ad hoc networks

Abstract

Abstract-Initial work in ad hoc routing has considered only the problem of providing efficient mechanisms for finding paths in very dynamic networks, without considering security. Because of this, there are a number of attacks that can be used to manipulate the routing in an ad hoc network. In this paper, we describe these threats, specifically showing their effects on AODV and DSR. Our protocol, named Authenticated Routing for Ad hoc Networks (ARAN), uses public-key cryptographic mechanisms to defeat all identified attacks. We detail how ARAN can secure routing in environments where nodes are authorized to participate but untrusted to cooperate, as well as environments where participants do not need to be authorized to participate. Through both simulation and experimentation with our publicly-available implementation, we characterize and evaluate ARAN and show that it is able to effectively and efficiently discover secure routes within an ad hoc network.

VARON: Vehicular Ad hoc Route Optimisation for NEMO

“…This task is performed by ad hoc routing protocols, which still suffer from a lot of vulnerabilities, mainly due to the unmanaged and non-centralised nature of ad hoc networks. Typical exploits against existing ad hoc routing protocols may be classified into the following categories [16]: AE Modification attacks. A malicious node can cause redirection of data traffic or Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks by introducing changes in routing control packets or by forwarding routing messages with falsified values.…”

“…Some ad hoc secure protocols make impossible to perform some of these exploits (such as ARAN [16]). However, there is no mechanism that combines in a secure way a Network Mobility approach, to deal with the issue of vehicular global connectivity, and a Vehicular Ad hoc Network, to optimise local car-to-car communications.…”

“…The ad hoc routing protocol used to create this route should provide certain security guarantees making impossible to perform any of the exploits described in Section 3. The mechanism used by VARON to set-up and maintain a secure ad hoc route is based on ARAN (Authenticated Routing for Ad hoc Networks) [16], modified and extended to fulfil the requirements of our Network Mobility based vehicular scenario.…”

“…In order to authenticate the message, a mechanism that securely binds the IP address of MR A (HoA A ) with K A+ is needed. One possibility is to use certificates issued by a third trusted party, as proposed in ARAN [16], but this solution seems unfeasible for vehicular environments. Instead, this secure binding is obtained by using a special type of addresses: Cryptographically Generated Addresses (CGAs) [17].…”

“…This additional latency represents the delay required to go through two Home Networks located in Europe (the value was chosen based on real RTT measurements 16 obtained from the PingER project [22]). …”