Secure Link State Routing for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks
Panagiotis Papadimitratos, Zygmunt J. Haas
TL;DR
The paper addresses secure proactive topology discovery in MANETs by introducing SLSP, a zone-based link-state protocol. SLSP secures topology dissemination through authenticated neighbor discovery, LSU propagation bounded by a hash-chain scheme, and PKD-based key distribution, aiming to tolerate Byzantine behavior with minimal centralized trust. Key contributions include the Neighbor Lookup Protocol (NLP), zone-limited flooding, and DoS protection mechanisms that together provide robust, scalable topology information without requiring full global maps. The approach supports standalone use or hybrid integration with reactive routing, offering practical security and efficiency for dynamically changing MANETs.
Abstract
The secure operation of the routing protocol is one of the major challenges to be met for the proliferation of the Mobile Ad hoc Networking (MANET) paradigm. Nevertheless, security enhancements have been proposed mostly for reactive MANET protocols. The proposed here Secure Link State Routing Protocol (SLSP) provides secure proactive topology discovery, which can be multiply beneficial to the network operation. SLSP can be employed as a stand-alone protocol, or fit naturally into a hybrid routing framework, when combined with a reactive protocol. SLSP is robust against individual attackers, it is capable of adjusting its scope between local and network-wide topology discovery, and it is capable of operating in networks of frequently changing topology and membership.