A Trust-Based Message Encryption Scheme for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

The specific characteristics of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) make secure transmission important issues in its research. In this paper, we present a scheme using soft encryption combined with multipath routing to provide security of data transmission over MANETs. In the scheme, the messages are divided into different parts and encrypted by simple operations such as XOR function and bits rearrangement. Taking into account the trustworthiness of the nodes, the trust level assigned to a node involved in a path. Then the encrypted message parts are routed along different trustworthier multipath accordingly. The mechanism is capable of operating without the existence of an on-line certification authority or the complete knowledge of keys of network nodes. Hence, this approach can substantially reduce the computational overhead of using cryptographic method to encrypt entire message while security is ensured.