An efficient secure distributed anonymous routing protocol for mobile and wireless ad hoc networks

An ad hoc wireless network is a temporary and dynamic environment where a group of mobile nodes with radio frequency transceivers communicate with each other without the intervention of any centralized administration or established infrastructure. Due to the limited transmission range of each mobile node, communication sessions between two nodes are usually established through a number of intermediate nodes, which are supposed to be willing to cooperate while forwarding the messages they receive to their destination. Unfortunately, some of these intermediate nodes might not be trustworthy and might be malicious, thereby forming a threat to the security and/or confidentiality of the exchanged data between the mobile nodes. While data encryption can protect the content exchanged between nodes, analysis of communication patterns may reveal valuable information about end users and their relationships. Using anonymous paths for communication provides security and privacy against traffic analysis. To establish these anonymous paths, in a traditional wired network, nodes build a global view of the network by exchanging routing information, whereas in an ad hoc wireless network, building this global view is not an option. In this paper, we propose a novel distributed routing protocol which guarantees security, anonymity and high reliability of the established route in a hostile environment, such as ad hoc wireless network, by encrypting routing packet header and abstaining from using unreliable intermediate node. The major objective of our protocol is to allow trustworthy intermediate nodes to participate in the path construction protocol without jeopardizing the anonymity of the communicating nodes. We describe our protocol, and provide its proof of correctness. (c) 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.