Secure Cooperative Cache Based Data Access in Ad Hoc Networks

Cooperative caching, which allows the sharing and coordination of cached data among multiple nodes, can be used to improve the performance of data access in ad hoc networks. When caching is used, data from the server is replicated on the caching nodes. Since a mobile node may return the cached data, or modify the route and forward a request to a caching node, it is very important that the mobile nodes do not maliciously modify data, drop or forward the request to the wrong destination. In this paper, we identify possible security attacks on cache consistency and propose a randomized grouping based schemes for intrusion detection, damage recovery and intruder identification. We also address other security issues in cooperative cache based data access.