Magliveras: Secure and efficient key management in mobile ad hoc networks

In mobile ad hoc networks, due to unreliable wireless media, host mobility and lack of infrastructure, pro-viding secure communications is a big challenge. Usually, cryptographic techniques are used for secure communications in wired and wireless networks. Symmetric and asymmetric cryptography have their ad-vantages and disadvantages. In fact, any cryptographic means is ineffective if its key management is weak. Key management is also a central aspect for security in mobile ad hoc networks. In mobile ad hoc networks, the computational load and complexity for key management are strongly subject to restriction by the node’s available resources and the dynamic nature of network topology. We propose a secure and efficient key management framework (SEKM) for mobile ad hoc networks. SEKM builds a PKI by applying a secret sharing scheme and using an underlying multicast server groups. We give detailed information on the for-mation and maintenance of the server groups. In SEKM, each server group creates a view of the certificate authority (CA) and provides certificate update service for all nodes, including the servers themselves. A ticket scheme is introduced for efficient certificate service. In addition, an efficient server group updating scheme is proposed. The performance of SEKM is evaluated through simulation