A hierarchical access control scheme in ad-hoc wireless networks

Abstract

The restrictions of resources present in the environment of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have forced the adaptation of the existing tools for guaranteeing security basic services in this new framework. The set of restrictions associated to computational, communication and power supply resources is the main barrier when providing them with security mechanisms. The solutions outlined so far for authentication based on classical tools have result non satisfactory for this setting. That is why examining the possibility of using advanced protocols should be explored. Following this trend, a new authentication protocol specifically designed for this setting is proposed in this work. A hard on average problem and an NP-complete one, belonging both to graph theory, are combined in order to design simultaneously an admission control protocol (ACP) and a node authentication protocol (NAP) using identification schemes belonging to the set of zero-knowledge interactive proofs (ZKIP). Using this technique is a way to avoid the nuisances derived from the utilization of PKT.