The adaptation of security mechanisms for Ad hoc Networks

Mobile Ad Hoc networks (MANETs) gain day after day places in our life considering the benefits given by these networks as mobility, facility of deployment and their costless. However their benefits are also subject of new challenges regarding the characteristics of these networks as battery and bandwidth constraints...etc. Therefore, new MANETs must confront lot of problems as security, routing, quality of service and energy saving. However from our point of view we see that the problem of security is the most important problem since mobile nodes are often part of hostile environment exposing them to new risks and attacks making private life or confidential information (commercial or military) in danger. Regarding the characteristics of mobile nodes as battery and processor power, existed and effective solutions developed for conventional networks are inapplicable directly for MANETs. Therefore in this thesis we try to give an adaptation of one of the most effective and efficient tool providing security for conventional networks which is Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), since it still questionable if it can be implemented for MANETs or not. Our proposed solution to adapt PKI for MANETs uses clustering, since recent researches have proven that clustering is effective to manage the complexity and the increasing size of MANETs, by dividing the whole network on a set of clusters (groups) in which one of the members plays the role of cluster-head managing its cluster and inter cluster communication. In our solution the cluster-head is the Certificate Authority of its cluster, guarantying in this way a permanent connection between the Certificate authority and the users. We’ve also developed and tested a new clustering algorithm called Secured Clustering Algorithm in order to support the security needs of clustered PKI, by including a set of security parameters in the creation of clusters.