Cooperative security-enforcement routing in mobile ad hoc networks

The characteristics of mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) introduce vulnerabilities to malicious attacks varying from passive eavesdropping to active interfering. With routing being a critical aspect for MANET, routing security is drawing increased attention. Yet, to date there is little work published in this area. We propose a cooperative security-enforcement routing (CSER) protocol that intends to provide effective identification of misbehaviors on ad hoc routing, detection latency reduction and approximate location of the misbehaving node on a path. We introduce the concept of a security domain, which is composed of a set of hosts trusting each other and which can be assured a certain level of security. Our protocol requires that the nodes on a route from the same security domain cooperate as security monitor and enforcement points. Simulation results show that the protocol achieves good detection accuracy, lower detection latency and lower end-to-end delay than some other approaches. Planned future work is also described.