23-07-2012, 04:13 PM
A System Level Security for Mobile Ad hoc Networks
A System Level Security for Mobile Ad hoc Networks.pdf (Size: 163 KB / Downloads: 25)
Abstract
Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) always
bring challenges to the designers in terms of its security
deployment due to its dynamic and infrastructure less
nature. In the past few years different researchers have
proposed different solutions for providing security to
MANETs. In most of the cases however, the solution is
targeting a particular attack or multiple attacks but fails
to find the root cause of it. In this paper we use system
level security for deploying the overall security in
MANETs. The system level security is the security at
node level as we believe that if nodes behave properly
and in a coordinated fashion, the insecurity level will go
drastically down. Our simulation results gives the
advantage of using this approach
Keywords-component; System Level; QoS; MANETs;
I. INTRODUCTION
Mobile Wireless Ad hoc Network MANET) is a group of
autonomous mobile nodes or devices connected through
wireless links without the support of a communications
infrastructure [1]. MANETs have many problems than
conventional wired and wireless networks due to the open
wireless medium used, dynamic topology, distributed and
cooperative sharing of channels and other resources, and
power and computation constraints. These factors make the
network more vulnerable to security attacks by making
nodes to either behave selfishly or maliciously. The nodes
thereby launch attacks to damage other nodes and cause
disconnection in the network.
The selfish node can save the power, drop the packets, deny
to participate in the network activities. The nodes also do
not re-broadcast Route Request (RREQ) when it receives a
RREQ, Re-broadcasts RREQ but does not forward Route
Reply (RREP) on reverse route etc. On the other hand the
malicious node can launch coordinated or uncoordinated
attacks like, black hole, wormhole, Replay, location
disclosure, denial of service attacks etc. Based on the above
threats we can see how damaging selfish and malicious
nodes can be, which can lead to inefficiency in MANETs.
Improving the ratio of well behaved nodes therefore
results in better trust amongst nodes, better security, and
hence better overall operation of the MANET. Different
researchers have proposed a cryptographic solution[3][4]
that enables them to communicate in the malicious
environment. However, that solution is not completely
reliable as it increases complexity in terms of encrypting and
decrypting at the source and the destination level. In this
paper we propose a system level (node level) solution that
forms routes by avoiding the selfish nodes and identifies
misbehaving nodes and eliminates them.. This therefore,
makes the communicating environment more reliable.
II. RELATED WORK
Many researchers from time to time have proposed different
security solutions for MANETs. These security solutions
either provide security to the existing Routing protocols or
provide security against a particular attack. The Secure
Efficient Ad hoc Distance (SEAD) [2] uses one way hash
chain. The elements of the chain are used to authenticate the
entries in the transmitted routing message. The SEAD either
uses the clock synchronization or the shared key between
nodes. The problems however using this approach is that it
requires authentication and key distribution scheme in order
to authenticate one element of a hash chain between two
nodes. ARIDNE proposed in [3] is a secure on demand ad
hoc routing based on the patterns of DSR. It uses a message
authentication code and shared key which it assumes is
already present to provide end to end security to the routing
protocol. This protocol is however difficult to deploy as it
requires the clock synchronization of the nodes and also
fails to guard against wormhole attacks. The Authenticated
Routing for Ad hoc Networks (ARAN) protocol, proposed
in [4], is designed to provide security against authentication
and non repudiation. In this protocol cryptographic
certificates are used to provide security from source to the
destination. This protocol works fine but the major problem
lies in the use of Asymmetric key cryptography which is
highly costly.
Some new security solutions proposed by various
researchers are also available like The simple and efficient
end to end protocol (SEEEP) in [5] . This protocol is used to
provide security against wormhole attacks. This algorithm
requires every node to know its location through global
positioning system. This protocol requires speed or time or
___________________________________
978-1-61284-840-2/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE