Fully self-organized key agreement for ad-hoc wireless networks

Abstract

This paper proposes a self-organizing bootstrap- ping protocol for establishing authenticated channels as well as secure identifiers in peer-to-peer networks. Specifically, the paper makes the following contributions. (1) It proposes a fully self-organized protocol that establishes an authenticated communication channel between nodes of a wireless ad-hoc network. This authenticated channel can then be used to establish a secret communication channel between nodes. This is the main contribution. (2) The protocol design also provides a secure identifier framework that is resilient to impersonation. The authentic identifiers it establishes can be used to associate network (and upper) layer identifiers to prevent spoofing. They can also serve as a reliable basis for reputation management protocols. The self-organized bootstrapping is a useful feature for designing autonomic systems.