Secure and anonymous routing in wireless ad-hoc networks

Abstract

In wireless ad-hoc networks, malicious nodes can constitute a threat to the security and/or anonymity of the exchanged data between communicating nodes. While data encryption can protect traffic content, plain routing headers may reveal valuable information about end nodes and their relationship. The main purposes of this thesis are to study the feasibility of achieving anonymity in wireless ad-hoc networks, and to propose a secure distributed anonymous routing protocol (SDAR), which is similar to the onion routing concept used in wired networks. SDAR employs a special mechanism to establish trust among wireless nodes and to avoid untrustworthy ones during route discovery processes. The major objective of SDAR is to allow only trustworthy nodes to participate in route construction without jeopardizing the anonymity of communicating nodes. In this thesis, we elaborate on the SDAR protocol and report on its performance evaluation using an extensive set of simulation experiments; last but not least, we present the preliminary work we have done on an agent-based trust and reputation management scheme (ATRM) for wireless sensor networks.