Message Authentication with Non-Transferability for Location Privacy in Mobile Ad hoc Networks

Message authentication is an effective solution to prevent notorious bogus messages and worm-hole attacks in mobile ad hoc networks (MANET). However, it could also be a double-edge sword threatening mobile users privacy, e.g., location privacy, if the authenticity proofs used in message authentication were abused. In this paper, to prevent such kind of abuse, we first propose a novel efficient message authentication scheme, which can achieve not only users identity privacy but also non-transferability. We then introduce an information theoretical model to gauge the privacy level that the proposed scheme can attain. Extensive simulation results demonstrate the proposed scheme can significantly reduce the violation of mobile users´ privacy in MANET.