Security on Mobile Ad-hoc Networks Sample Clauses

Security on Mobile Ad-hoc Networks. Mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) are special type of wireless network in which a collection of mobile devices with wireless network interfaces may form temporary network, without the aid of any fixed infrastructure or centralized administration. A whole new generation of portable devices is commercially available, such as personal digital assistants (PDA), computer laptops, etc. In MANETs, nodes within their wireless transmitter range can communicate with each other directly, while nodes outside the range have to rely on some other nodes to relay messages. Thus a multi-hop scenario occurs, where packets of the source node are relayed by several intermediate nodes before reaching the destination node. Every node what the packet passed functions to be as a router. The success of communication highly depends on the other node’s cooperation. The MANETs are also regarded as ideal technology for creating instant communication networks for civilian and military applications. In recent years, MANETs have received a great deal of attention in both academia and industry. This emerging technology aims to provide “anytime-anywhere” networking services on a potentially large scale. While MANETs can be quickly and inexpensive setup as needed, security is a critical issue compared to wired or other wireless counterparts. Many passive and actives security attacks could be launched from the outside by malicious nodes or from the inside by compromised nodes. There are five fundamental security issues which have to be addressed: confidentiality, integrity, non-repudiation, authentication and availability. Because of the high level of self-organization, dynamic topology, dynamic membership or vulnerable wireless link, MANETs are difficult to secure. In addition, security solutions applied in most traditional network with a static configuration may not directly implement for protecting them according to the mobility of MANETs. Many applications of MANETs involve collaborative computing among a large number of nodes and are thus group-oriented in nature. Examples of such applications include coordination of fire fighters in a rescue task and coordination of soldier during battle. For deploying such applications in an adversarial environment such as battlefield or even in many civilian commercial scenarios, it is necessary to provide support for secure group communication. Secure group communication requires scalable and efficient group membership management with appropriate acce...