NIZKP to Achieve Authentication in Ad-hoc Networks

INTRODUCTION

Security features like confidentiality, integrity and authentication plays a vital role in any form of communication be it wired or wireless. Authentication becomes difficult in a wireless network that doesn’t have a fixed infrastructure and where the nodes of the network are mobile. Such types of wireless networks, where there is a lack of infrastructure and the mobility of nodes are frequent are termed as Mobile ad-hoc Networks (MANETs). In a MANET the nodes exhibit dynamic feature in terms of location (mobility) through which the nodes produce continuous nodes insertions and deletions (Kumar et al., 2011). So only the credential nodes can carry out the required tasks in a self-organized manner (Maity and Hansdah, 2012). This makes authentication a great challenge as it is not supported by any fixed infrastructure. The major problem in ensuring security service in an MANET lies on managing the keys and providing privacy for data communication. One cannot ensure security services in a MANET without the basic knowledge of solid key management. In this research contribution an attempt has been made to achieve re-authentication of nodes in MANET using a NIZKP (Non Interactive Zero Knowledge Protocol). Re-authentication happens when an authenticated node wants to rejoin the network after it has lost its connectivity due to mobility.

Now-a-days people are very much inclined towards the term “wireless” which enables the users to connect to his network regardless of the time and place. In order to achieve this, the researchers (Sengan and Pandian, 2012) turned their concentration over IP network configuration integrated with IP based network core and a set of networks that access it, which paved the way for the 4th generation communications with number of heterogeneous wireless access networks to come into play (Salmanian et al., 2010). Here the authentication plays a vital role to allow only the legitimate users to access the resources.

A MANET is a set of mobile computing nodes which communicate within themselves without the support of fixed infrastructure or a centralized administration (Stieglitz and Fuch, 2011). These nodes can meet anywhere, form a network and have a direct communication between each other by using radio technologies such as Bluetooth, IEEE 802.11 or HIPERLAN. Every node in the MANET behaves like a router as well as a host (Al-Bahadili et al., 2011). The security challenges in MANET arise due to its dynamic nature, vulnerable links and ad-hoc environment. MANET has been used in sensitive applications such as search and rescue mission in military, sensor networks, etc. The major security issues to be focused in MANET are authentication, integrity and confidentiality (Martinez et al., 2010).

In MANET, due to its mobility a node can join or leave the network in a dynamic fashion. So it becomes very difficult to control the user access as well as hard to define encryption technology. The nodes in this type of network can be attacked easily by inactive eavesdropping or active intervention (Chowdhury and Neogy, 2011). So each node should be able to confront the attacker in any form. There are various methods in research for secure authentication and cipher key management to overcome this vulnerability. The ID based technology provides authentication without prior information or any public key means that, it provides authentication without shared information. It avoids third party to pretend like the authorized user or re-using the authentication ID. The following authentications are needed for ad-hoc network:

The intended readers may read Nikos Komninos et al. (2007) for more information on MANETs.

Most of the popular authentication protocols in MANET are based on one of the following. Mechanisms based on Authentication management architecture developed on RSA signature (Murugan and Shanmugam, 2011), Using Trusted Third Party (TTP) based authentication, identification schemes based on chain of trust (Irshad et al., 2010). Location-limited authentication used when the area is small and physical authentication is needed between the closer nodes are the current authentication schemes.

One of most important characteristics of the ad-hoc network is group based applications, for these applications the traditional identification techniques discussed above may not be appropriate always. Fulfilling these requirements, leads to the development of the latest technique based on Non Interactive Zero Knowledge Proofs (NIZKPs) and solves the problem of authentication and self-organization for MANET nodes. The problem of re-authentication when a node moves out of a network and wants to rejoin the same network is not addressed by these existing mechanisms.