Establishing Authenticated Channels and Secure Identifiers in Ad-hoc Networks

In this work, we describe a method for establishing authenticated channels in a wireless ad-hoc network. The presented protocol is fully self-organized, and it also provides an identification framework. The two main contributions are (1) a fully self-organized protocol that establishes an authenticated communication channel between nodes of a wireless ad-hoc network and (2) a secure identifier framework that is resilient to impersonation. The authenticated channel provided by the protocol can then be used to establish a secret communication channel between nodes. The authentic identifiers established can be used to associate network (and upper) layer identifiers to prevent spoofing. They can also serve as a reliable basis for reputation management protocols. The paper analyzes the proposed approach in terms of security and complexity (both communication and storage).