The ubiquity of the Internet, especially with its wireless and mobile domains, poses new challenges. Security is paramount for the proliferation of both commercial and tactical applications based on the emerging technology of mobile ad hoc networking. Users would have no incentive to embrace new products if, for example, their privacy is at stake or they cannot access their services and get the quality they paid for. Similarly, an Army General or a Police Commissioner would not endorse networking technologies that do not guarantee secure and reliable communications in a battlefield or an emergency situation.

We have developed a protocol suite to secure communication in mobile ad hoc networks. We propose a complete security solution at the network layer, with building blocks selected among: (a) the Neighbor Lookup Protocol (NLP), the Secure Routing Protocol (SRP), and the Secure Link State Protocol (SLSP) to secure the discovery of routes, and (b) the Secure Message Transmission (SMT) protocol, and the Secure Single Path (SSP) protocol to secure the transmission of data.

The security of the route discovery is a is a prerequisite for secure communication in the self-organizing, open ad hoc networking environment. Our Secure Routing Protocol (SRP) addresses exactly this problem. SRP discovers one or more correct routes across an unknown, frequently changing network, in the presence of adversaries.

Results from our on-going work demonstrated efficient and effective operation even against a significant fraction of misbehaving network nodes. We have integrated secure routing and secure data transmission protocols and showed how to achieve highly reliable and low-delay communication in a hostile netowrking environment.

People

Faculty:  Zygmunt J. Haas (haas@ece.cornell.edu)

Student: Panos Papadimitratos (papadp@ece.cornell.edu)

Related Publications: (full text documents)

P. Papadimitratos and Z.J. Haas. “Secure Message Transmission in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks.” Elsevier Ad Hoc Networks Journal, vol. 1, no. 1, July 2003.

P. Papadimitratos and Z.J. Haas. “Securing the Internet Infrastructure.” IEEE Communications Magazine, Special Issue on Telecommunication Networks Security, Vol. 40, No. 10, October 2002.

P. Papadimitratos and Z.J. Haas. “Secure Routing for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks.” Mobile Computing and Communications Review, Vol.6, No.4, October 2002.

P. Papadimitratos and Z.J. Haas. “Securing Mobile Ad Hoc Networks.” Handbook of Mobile Computing, I. Mahgoub, ed., CRC Press, in press.

P. Papadimitratos and Z.J. Haas. “Secure Communication in Adverse Mobile Ad Hoc Networks.” Ad Hoc Networking, D-Z. Du, ed., Kluwer Academic Publishers, in press.

P. Papadimitratos and Z.J. Haas. “Securing Mobile Ad Hoc Networks.” Handbook of Ad Hoc Wireless Networks, M. Ilyas, ed., CRC Press, December 2002.

P. Papadimitratos and Z.J. Haas. “Secure Message Transmission in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks.” In Proceedings of the Second ACM Workshop on Wireless Security (WiSe’03), in conjunction with ACM MobiCom 2003, San Diego, CA, September 19, 2003.

P. Papadimitratos and Z.J. Haas. “Secure Link State Routing for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks.” In Proceedings of the IEEE Workshop on Security and Assurance in Ad hoc Networks, in conjunction with the 2003 International Symposium on Applications and the Internet, Orlando, Florida, January 28, 2003.

P. Papadimitratos and Z.J. Haas. “Performance Evaluation of Secure Routing Protocol for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks.” Poster presentation in the First ACM Workshop on Wireless Security (WiSe’02), in conjunction with ACM MobiCom 2002, Atlanta, GA, September 28, 2002.

P. Papadimitratos and Z.J. Haas. “Secure Routing for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks.” In Proceedings of the SCS Communication Networks and Distributed Systems Modeling and Simulation Conference (CNDS 2002), San Antonio, TX, January 27-31, 2002.

P. Papadimitratos, Z.J. Haas, and P. Samar. “The Secure Routing Protocol (SRP) for Ad Hoc Networks.” IETF Internet Draft <draft-papadimitratos-secure-routing-protocol-00.txt>, Work in progress, December 11, 2002.