Autonomous Ant-based Public Key Authentication Mechanism for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

In mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs), where there is no centralized authority to provide authentication, trust and reputation mechanisms are applied to maintain security by identifying trustworthy and untrustworthy nodes. However, traditional authentication mechanisms are not viable for MANETs due to the lack of infrastructure and frequent topology changes. In this paper, we propose a self-organized and localized public key authentication mechanism based on ant colony systems. Every node generates its own public-private key pair, issues certificates to neighboring nodes and provides on-demand authentication services by means of gathering certificate chains towards a target node. Pheromone concentration left by ants along the path of the certificate chains represents the trust level of a node towards other nodes. This model is able to authenticate public keys by selecting the most trustworthy certificate chains gathered by ants and can identify and exclude certificate chains with malicious nodes.