Security architecture for the mobile ad hoc networks

Jozef Filipek – Ladislav Hudec

   Security in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) has been an actively researched topic for the several years. As opposed to wired networks, MANETs have dynamic topology, limited resources, limited bandwidth and are usually deployed in emergency scenarios outside, where landscape plays important role. MANETs are susceptible to insider and outsider attacks and bring new security challenges which were not present in the wired networks. The most important difference is that every node in MANET acts as a router and routes traffic throughout the network. Compromising one node can hugely affect network performance. In this paper, we present our security architecture for MANETs which secures important aspects of the network. We bring trust model into the network and nodes are secured by different mechanisms tailored specifically for the use in distributed environment. We use Omnet++ for network simulations. Simulations use delays measured on the real hardware and we analyze performance of the network during different data plane and control plane loads..

Keywords: AES, attribute authority, architecture, firewall, MANET, PKI, RSA, security

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