Anonymity and security in delay tolerant networks

A delay tolerant network (DTN) is a store and forward network where end-to-end connectivity is not assumed and where opportunistic links between nodes are used to transfer data. An emerging application of DTNs are rural area DTNs, which provide Internet connectivity to rural areas in developing regions using conventional transportation mediums, like buses. Potential applications of these rural area DTNs are e-governance, telemedicine and citizen journalism. Therefore, security and privacy are critical for DTNs. Traditional cryptographic techniques based on PKI-certified public keys assume continuous network access, which makes these techniques inapplicable to DTNs because of their disconnected nature. We present the first anonymous communication solution for DTNs and introduce a new anonymous authentication protocol as part of it. Furthermore, we present a security infrastructure for DTNs to provide efficient secure communication. Our anonymity and security solutions are based on identity-based cryptography. We show that our solutions have better performance than previously proposed security infrastructures for DTNs.