Survivable keying for wireless ad hoc networks

Cryptographic techniques are at the center of security solutions for wireless ad hoc networks. Public key infrastructures (PKIs) are essential for their efficient operation. However, the fully distributed organization of these networks makes a challenge to design PKIs. Moreover, changes in network paradigms and the increasing dependency on technology require more dependable, survivable and scalable PKIs. This paper presents a survivable PKI whose goal is to preserve key management operations even in face of attacks or intrusions. Our PKI is based on the adaptive cooperation among preventive, reactive and tolerant defense lines. It employs different evidences to prove the liability of users for their keys as well as social relationships for helping public key exchanges. Simulation results show the improvements achieved by our proposal in terms of effectiveness and survivability to different attacks.