Anonymity,Unlinkability,Unobservability for Routing Protocol in MANETs

Abstract

Privacy protection of mobile ad HOC networks is more demanding than that of wired networks due to the open nature and mobility of wireless media. In wired networks, one has to gain access to wired cables so as to eavesdrop communications. Privacy-preserving routing is crucial for some ad HOC networks that require stronger privacy protection. In hostile environments, the enemy can launch traffic analysis against interceptable routing information embedded in routing messages and data packets. Allowing adversaries to trace network routes and infer the motion pattern of nodes at the end of those routes may pose a serious threat to covert operations. A number of schemes have been proposed to protect privacy in ad HOC networks. However, none of these schemes offer complete unlink ability or unobservability property since data packets and control packets are still linkable and distinguishable in these schemes. In this paper, we define stronger privacy requirements regarding privacy preserving routing in mobile ad HOC networks. Anonymous key establishment process and route discovery process authenticates the routing paths taken by individual messages. Achieving anonymity is a different problem than achieving data confidentiality. While data can be protected by cryptographic means, the recipient node address and maybe the sender node address of a packet cannot be simply encrypted because they are needed by the network to route the packet.

Keywords: Mobile Ad hoc Networks, Anonymity, Routing Protocol, Geographical Routing

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