Limitations of existing wireless networks authentication and key management techniques for MANETs

Abstract

Providing security support for mobile networks is challenging. Masquerading and eavesdropping are major threats to the security of wireless communications and mobile networks. To provide proper protection for the communication of the wireless link, the contents of the communication should be enciphered and mutual authentication should be conducted between the communicating nodes. Authentication protocols and key management techniques play a vital role and are the basis of security in many distributed systems. Much research has been conducted into the development of key management techniques and authentication protocols for WLAN (802.11b, 802.11i, 802.15.1, HIPERLAN) and traditional wireless networks (GSM, UMTS). This paper specifically describes the fundamental limitations of these underlying techniques and protocols and discusses why they cannot be directly employed in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper which collectively addresses the limitations of the security mechanisms used in existing wireless networks for MANETs