Handbook of Information Security, Volume 1, Key Concepts, Infrastructure, Standards, and Protocols

Ad Hoc Network Security

Pietro Michiardi and Refik Molva, Institut Eurecom, France

Introduction

Routing Security

Secure Routing Proposals

Notes on the Wormhole Attack

Key Management

Public Key Management

Distribution of Symmetric Keys

Context-Aware Key Management

Cooperation Enforcement

Cooperation Enforcement Mechanisms Based on Threshold Cryptography

Cooperation Enforcement Mechanisms Based on Micropayment Schemes

Cooperation Enforcement Mechanisms Based on Reputation

Validation of Cooperation Enforcement Mechanisms through Game Theory

Conclusion

Glossary

Cross References

References

Further Reading

INTRODUCTION

An ad hoc network consists of a set of wireless nodes that act both as data terminals and data transfer equipment to spontaneously form a temporary network without relying on any dedicated infrastructure. Security of ad hoc networks recently received much attention from the research community and a large number of solutions to protect ad hoc networks against various types of attacks have been published. Security in ad hoc networks is a severe problem because of the conjunction of several factors:

• Vulnerabilities resulting from radio communications: the lack of physical security and the ease of eavesdropping and spoofing call for strong security mechanisms in order to get security that is equivalent to standard wireline communications.
• Lack of a priori trust: most ad hoc networks consist of a set of nodes that are not part of any shared organization thus classical security ...