Security in Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks

12

Secure Routing

Security threats against routing schemes are explained in Chapter 8. In this chapter we introduce the counter measures against those threats. First we summarize the approaches for secure routing. In this summary the focus is on wormhole attacks, sybil attacks, selective forwarding and secure multicasting/broadcasting. Routing techniques that improve the performance of security measures for other services are also elaborated. Selected secure routing protocols are explained in the second part of this chapter.

12.1 Defense Against Security Attacks in Ad Hoc Routing

Since routing is one of the important challenges in ad hoc and sensor networks, it has attracted many researchers and been studied extensively. Most of the research has focused primarily on quality of service guarantees for ad hoc networks and energy efficiency for sensor networks. However, many ad hoc and sensor network applications are designed to be deployed in hostile environments and are subject to hostility. Therefore, security should also be considered one of the primary factors influencing the design of routing protocols.

There are three approaches to designing a secure routing protocol (Parno et al., 2006):

• attack prevention;
• attack detection and recovery from the attack;
• resilience to security attacks.

Routing protocols can be designed such that an adversary cannot compromise nodes/messages or make the routing scheme dysfunction. This is the most effective approach with respect to the cost ...