Secure Hierarchical Group Routing for Ad Hoc Networks

S. Er and J.P. Thomas (USA)

Keywords

Ad hoc network, group hierarchy, group communication, private/public key, threshold cryptography

Abstract

Nodes in Mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) communicate with each other without any physical infrastructure. Because ad hoc networks are mobile and topology is continuously changing, introducing security is a very difficult task to accomplish. In this paper, we use DSR (Dynamic Source Routing) Protocol. In a hierarchical MANET, each node in the network belongs to a particular level in the hierarchy. Moreover, each node belongs to one of the logically defined groups. We propose a hierarchical security mechanism for MANET. We introduce private/public key mechanism against IP spoofing and a threshold cryptography mechanism is implemented against hacker attacks. If a node wants to change its current group, a re-keying mechanism is proposed in order to provide secure communication between groups. Based on simulations, we have obtained overhead values for adding security to route discovery, message transmission, and re-keying.

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