ID-NAC: Identity-based network access control for MANETs

Security in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) is an active research topic. Bulks of prior work focused on key management and secure routing without addressing an important pre-requisite: network access control, the problem of admission and revocation of ad hoc nodes. In this paper, we present ID-NAC, identity-based network access control for MANETs. In ID-NAC each node in the network maintains a profile table, which contains information about the behavior of the nodes in the MANET. It is used to assign a quantitative value for the trustworthiness of a node. Since, there is no observation about the behaviors of prospective members at first; they are admitted to the network tentatively. Then, their behaviors are monitored in the network and if they behave well, they can obtain an identity-based membership tokens based on their trustworthiness. In addition, using profile tables provide protection against wrongful revocation of membership tokens through malicious accusations. The feasibility of ID-NAC was verified by simulation.