Leveraging social networks for key distribution to secure communication in tactical military networks

Cooperative caching in MANETS and forwarding data items through mobile nodes in Delay Tolerant Networks are two important methods for improving performance and providing connectivity in mobile tactical networks. In this paper we present the challenges of securing cooperative caching the DTN systems. Our security solution is based on MML-IPSec. The main challenge of this system is key distribution and its impact on performance. We propose leveraging military structure, knowledge of missions, and the roles of personnel to enable secure systems to maintain high performance.