Security in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

In mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), the nodes act both astraffic sources and as relays that forward packets from other nodesalong multi-hop routes to the destination. Such networks are suitedto situations in which a wireless infrastructure is unavailable,infeasible, or prohibitively expensive. However, the lack of atrusted infrastructure in such networks, makes secure and reliablepacket delivery very challenging. A given node acting as a relaymay exhibit malicious behavior with respect to packet forwarding,which disrupts packet transmission in the network. For example, amalicious node may arbitrarily choose to drop or misroute packetsthat are passed to it for forwarding to the next hop. This bookintroduces a trust establishment framework for MANETs, calledHermes, which aims to improve the reliability of packet forwardingover multi-hop routes in the presence of malicious nodes and todiscourage selfish node behavior. The analysis sheds light on thisnew and exciting network environment, and should be especiallyuseful to professionals in Network Security and CommunicationNetwork fields, or anyone else who is interested in learning aboutsecure data networks.