Situation - Aware Security for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Newly emerging ad hoc networking technology has enormous potential benefit for many missioncritical applications. However, providing adequate security required for the target applications presents many new challenges due to the unique nature of ad hoc environments. Complete decentralization and the absence of any support infrastructure in ad hoc environments effectively eliminates the possibility of the direct application of known security service designs from wired networks and infrastructure-based wireless networks. In this thesis, we investigate the environmental challenges posed by ad hoc environments and their effects on security service designs. Interactions between environmental factors, network properties and the quality of the security service are captured in a newly proposed concept called the Situation. Based on the understanding of situations, we provide design guidelines for Situation-Aware Security services where a security service is viewed as a best-effort service whose quality must be continuously monitored and quantified. The measurement of the varying quality of a security service is then conveyed to the end users to aid their decisions on appropriate usage of the provided security service. Based on this situation-aware security paradigm, we present two types of security services, security-aware routing for quantifiably secure route discovery and situation-aware key management that provides end users with the best-achievable authentication service with intuitive metrics to measure the provided quality of authentication.