Authenticated routing for ad hoc networks

TLDR

Ad hoc routing research has focused on efficient path discovery, leaving security unaddressed, which allows various attacks to manipulate routing decisions. The study catalogs routing attacks against on‑demand distance vector and dynamic source routing protocols and demonstrates their impact. ARAN employs public‑key cryptographic techniques to authenticate routing messages, enabling secure path discovery in both authorized‑but‑untrusted and open participation environments. Simulations and real‑world tests show that ARAN reliably and efficiently establishes secure routes in ad hoc networks.

Abstract

Initial work in ad hoc routing has considered only the problem of providing efficient mechanisms for finding paths in very dynamic networks, without considering security. Because of this, there are a number of attacks that can be used to manipulate the routing in an ad hoc network. In this paper, we describe these threats, specifically showing their effects on ad hoc on-demand distance vector and dynamic source routing. Our protocol, named authenticated routing for ad hoc networks (ARAN), uses public-key cryptographic mechanisms to defeat all identified attacks. We detail how ARAN can secure routing in environments where nodes are authorized to participate but untrusted to cooperate, as well as environments where participants do not need to be authorized to participate. Through both simulation and experimentation with our publicly available implementation, we characterize and evaluate ARAN and show that it is able to effectively and efficiently discover secure routes within an ad hoc network.