30-06-2012, 12:34 PM
SECURING DATA IN AD HOC NETWORKS USING MULTIPATH ROUTING
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ABSTRACT
Development of handheld features and mobile telephony makes Ad hoc networks widely adopted, but security
remains a complicated issue. Recently, there are several proposed solutions treating authentication, availability,
secure routing and intrusion detection etc, in Ad hoc networks. In this paper we introduce a securing data
protocol in Ad hoc networks, SDMP protocol.
INTRODUCTION
WLANs (Wireless Local Area Networks) provide an alternative to the traditional LANs where users
can access shared data or exchange information without looking for a place to plug in. In recent years,
demands for greater mobility and the military’s need for sensor networks have popularized the
notion of infrastructure less or Ad hoc networks.
Mobile Ad hoc networks are self organizing network architectures in which a collection of mobile
nodes with wireless network interfaces may form a temporary network without the aid of any
established infrastructure or centralized administration. According to the IETF definition [1], a mobile
Ad hoc network is an autonomous system of mobile routers connected by wireless links. This union
forms an arbitrary graph. The routers are free to move randomly and organize themselves arbitrarily;
thus, the network’s wireless topology may change rapidly and unpredictably [2].This allows for
greater mobility and dynamic allocation of nodes structures.
VULNERABILITIES AND ATTACKS IN AD HOC NETWORKS
In security domain, new vulnerabilities appear with Ad hoc technology. Nodes become easier to be
stolen since they are mobile, the computing capacity is limited. That makes using heavy solutions,
as PKI [4][5], not very practice. Also, Ad hoc networks services are provisional and batteries are a
limited alimentation resource what makes a Denial of Service attack by consumption of energy very
possible [6].
Ad hoc networks are exposed to many possible attacks. We can classify these attacks into two
kinds: Passive attacks and Active attacks [7].
In passive attacks [8], attackers don’t disrupt the operation of routing protocol but only attempt to
discover valuable information by listening to the routing traffic. Defending against such attacks is
difficult, because it is usually impossible to detect eavesdropping in a wireless environment.
Furthermore, routing infor- mation can reveal relationships between nodes or disclose their IP
addresses.
RELATED WORK
Recently, there are several researches about many security aspects in Ad hoc networks. We find for
example IPsec [13], WEP (Wireless Equivalent Privacy) [14], Distributed Trust model [15], Key
Agreement model [16], the Resurrecting Duckling solution, or using threshold cryptography as in
solution cited in [18]. As Secure Routing solutions, we can cite SAODV or SRP. Intrusion
Detection solutions as architecture proposed in an important researches area in Ad hoc security too.
There is no global solution for all kinds of Ad hoc networks, and no one is enough resistant for all
important vulnerabilities. There are partial solutions only for specific issues.
Secure Routing Protocol for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks
An important aspect of Ad hoc networks security is routing security. The discussed Secure
Routing Protocol (SRP) in counters malicious behavior that targets the discovery of topological
information. SRP provides correct routing information (factual, up-to-date, and authentic connectivity
information regarding a pair of nodes that wish to communicate in a secure manner). SRP discovers one
or more routes whose correctness can be verified. Route requests propagate verifiably to the sought,
trusted destination. Route replies are returned strictly over the reversed route, as accumulated in the
route request packet. There is an interaction of the protocol with the IP layer functionality.
The reported path is the one placed in the reply packet by the destination, and the corresponding
connectivity information is correct, since the reply was relayed along the reverse of the discovered
route. In the same paper, Papadimitratos and Haas suggest to protect data transmission by using their
Protocol named Secure Message Transmission Protocol (SMT), which provides, according to them, a
flexible end-to-end secure data forwarding scheme that can naturally complements SRP. They use
methodology of to proof their protocol authentication correctness and a performance evaluation of SRP
under different kinds of attacks is available in [26].
CONCLUSION
In this paper, we proposed a solution that treats data confidentiality problem by exploiting a very
important Ad hoc network characteristic which is MultiPath. Our proposal improves data security
robustly without being heavy. It takes profit from existing Ad hoc networks’ characteristics and doesn’t
modify existing lower layers protocols. This solution can be combined with other solutions which
ensure other security aspects than confidentiality. We are carrying out tests and evaluations to
emphasize its performances to ensure security.