Bootstrapping security associations for routing in mobile ad-hoc networks

Abstract

To date, most solutions proposed for secure routing in mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs), assume that secure associations between pairs of nodes can be established on-line; e.g., by a trusted third party, by distributed trust establishment. However, establishing such security associations, with or without trusted third parties, requires reliance on routing layer security. In this paper, we eliminate this apparent cyclic dependency between security services and secure routing in MANETs and show how to bootstrap security for the routing layer. We use the notion of statistically unique and cryptographically verifiable (SUCV) identifiers to implement a secure binding between IP addresses and keys that is independent of any trusted security service. We illustrate our solution with the Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocol and compare it with other solutions for secure routing.

A survey of survivability in mobile ad hoc networks

“…Routing is essential for the correct operation of MANETs, and many routing protocols have been proposed in the literature, including proactive ( Secure routing protocols have been proposed [27,28,40], such as SRP [30], SAODV [41], SAR [42]. These secure protocols are mostly based on authentication and encryption algorithms, being inefficient to put all intruders and attacks off.…”

Secure long term communities in ad hoc networks

“…its public key. SUCV [15] and CAM [16] are other mechanisms based on the idea of provable identity that have already been used to secure roaming in IP networks [2], to bootstrap secure routing [5] in IP ad hoc networks, or to make node addresses verifiable in a fully self-organized ad hoc network [6].…”

“…At the community level, a device can be unknown, trusted, or distrusted: a device is unknown before its insertion; it becomes trusted the first time it is inserted in the community (i.e., when at least one device of the community mutually trusts it); finally, it becomes distrusted the first time a device in the community marks it as distrusted 5 . Consequently, these states are strictly timely ordered: the device a ∈ Λ knowing a device b in its most advanced state should be considered as the most up-to-date, and all the other devices of the community should be synchronized according to a's knowledge.…”

Modeling Secure Connectivity of Self-Organized Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

“…This unique feature introduces the well-known routing-security dependency loop [18], [19]: acyclic dependency arises between security services and routing services since multi-hop security services require routing layer security themselves. This loop implies two consequences especially for node authentication.…”