SEMAN: A Novel Secure Middleware for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

As a consequence of the particularities of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs), such as dynamic topology and self-organization, the implementation of complex and flexible applications is a challenge. To enable the deployment of these applications, several middleware solutions were proposed. However, these solutions do not completely consider the security requirements of these networks. Based on the limitations of the existing solutions, this paper presents a new secure middleware, called Secure Middleware for Ad Hoc Networks (SEMAN), which provides a set of basic and secure services to MANETs aiming to facilitate the development of distributed, complex, and flexible applications. SEMAN considers the context of applications and organizes nodes into groups, also based on these contexts. The middleware includes three modules: service, processing, and security. Security module is the main part of the middleware. It has the following components: key management, trust management, and group management. All these components were developed and are described in this paper. They are supported by a cryptographic core and behave according to security rules and policies. The integration of these components provides security guarantees against attacks to the applications that usethe middleware services.