A Survey of Secure Address Auto-Configuration in MANET

Abstract

Mobile ad hoc networking offers convenient infrastructure-less communication over the shared wireless channels. The major research efforts in the area of Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) focus on developing efficient routing protocols assuming that IP addresses of mobile hosts have been already configured before joining the network. Providing security for IP address auto-configuration in MANET is still an open problem. Existing solutions for IP address autoconfiguration in MANET do not address security issues. However, it may disserve network security if there is not a reliable authentication mechanism, e.g. an attacker may spoof other nodes and hijack their traffic. Unlike their wired counterpart, infrastructure-less ad hoc networks do not have a clear line of defense, and every node must be prepared for encountering with an adversary. Therefore, a centralized or hierarchical network security solution does not work well. This paper describes the state of research in secure address auto-configuration problem and analyzes the current existing solutions.

Secure autoconfiguration and public-key distribution for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

“…This section gives a brief description of four secure autoconfiguration schemes, three of which have been examined in [16]. We used the same nominations from [16], but include their weaknesses from our points of view.…”

Dynamic Distribution of Security Keys and IP Addresses Coalition Protocol for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

“…Most research in MANET security and address management assumes two protocols (i.e., one protocol for address assignment and another for security key assignment). Few papers have been published concerning the autoconfiguration and key distribution in adhoc networks [41,42]. The idea of these approaches is to correlate IP address with a security key which incurs many problems include NATing of local address, fixed mapping of IP, and security key generation.…”