Modeling vulnerabilities of ad hoc routing protocols

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to automate the analysis of ad hoc routing protocols in the presence of attackers. To this end, a formal model of protocol behavior is developed in which time is modeled by a set of constraints on the time of occurrence of events, enabling the representation of partially ordered timed events and asynchronous communication. Data variables are represented symbolically, capturing a range of distinct executions in each expression. Given a formal description of Ad Hoc On Demand Distance Vector Routing Algorithm (AODV) and a desired safety property (route stability), an analysis by a naive semi-decision procedure discovers an instance of an attack that leads to a violation of the property.

Model Checking Ad Hoc Network Routing Protocols: ARAN vs. endairA

“…Since proving that a routing protocol is free from attacks is impossible by informal reasoning (as is the case for security protocol analysis in general, due to the virtually infinite protocol execution scenarios that should be considered), much effort has been recently devoted to modelling and analysing wireless communication and/or routing protocols in a formal way. For example, Yang and Baras [17] provide a symbolic model for routing protocols based on strand spaces, modelling the network topology but not the cryptographic primitives that can be used for securing communications; they also implement a semi-decision procedure to search for attacks. Buttyán and Vadja [18] provide a model for routing protocols in a cryptographic setting; they provide a security proof (by hand) for a fixed protocol.…”

Secure neighbor discovery in wireless networks

“…Recently, there has been a rising interest in formalizing analysis of security protocols in wireless networks. The problem of distance bounding has been treated formally in [15], whereas other works were concerned with routing [16,1,18,30] or local area networking [11]. These works are concerned with different problems and their approaches are not amenable to reason about secure neighbor discovery.…”

Towards provable security for ad hoc routing protocols

“…A different approach with similar goals to ours is presented in [28]. The authors of [28] propose a formal model for ad hoc routing protocols with the aim of representing insider attacks (which correspond to our notion of corrupted nodes).…”

“…The authors of [28] propose a formal model for ad hoc routing protocols with the aim of representing insider attacks (which correspond to our notion of corrupted nodes). Their model is similar to the strand spaces model [10], which has been developed for the formal verification of key exchange protocols.…”

“…The CPAL-ES analysis of SRP in [19] does not identify the attack presented in Section 4, which we have discovered with our approach. On the other hand, the advantage of the approaches of [19] and [28] is that they can be automated.…”