Research Project Proposal for Master Degree Security and Privacy in Mobile Ad hoc Networks By Modaser Background and

Motivation Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are self-organized networks, without any pre-deployed infrastructure, that have the potential to support many applications, such as vehicular networking (VANET), internet provision in rural areas and military networks. In a MANET environment, the devices are highly portable, scenarios of deployment are dynamic and resources are shared amongst the wireless devices. Owing to these features, ensuring security in such networks poses to be a tough challenge and is currently an active area of research [1], [5]. Another area of focus has been developing mobility models for MANETs, as mobility has been shown to be a key feature affecting network capacity, routing performance and cluster maintenance aspects of these networks [3], [4]. However, there has been no attempt to exploit mobility models for designing security models for MANETs. This project aims at using advanced mobility models to design a security model that is more robust, computationally less complex and more practical for deployment in a MANET environment. Approach and Plan Designing a network security model involves analyzing attack models, suggesting remedies and modelling trust for the network environment. A three phase plan will be followed to achieve this objective. In the first phase,

I plan to analyse the practical usage of existing trust and attack models in light of the resource constraints that a MANET environment faces (such as no centralized infrastructure, limited battery power). I will be concentrating on trust models like PGP, distributed trust model, subjective logic model [2], [5]. I will also be studying about both passive attacks (like eavesdropping, selfishness) and active attacks (like masquerade, wormhole attacks). In the second phase I aim to understand advanced mobility models that capture realistic traces of scenarios in which one wants to eventually operate the network. I will particularly focus on the group mobility model and the time variant community model (TVC) [3], [4]. In the third phase, I finally aim to develop an improved security model which overcomes the limitations observed in phase 1 by making use of information about node mobility patterns and network topology dynamics from mobility models analysed in phase 2. The following is an approximate timeline of the progress of this project: 1. Phase 1: Analysis of limitations in practical deployment of existing attack and trust models for MANETs. 2. Phase 2: Study of advanced mobility models for wireless mobile networks depicting spatial and temporal dependencies of user mobility. 3. Phase 3: Application of results from mobility model traces to design an improved security model for MANETs. References

[1] S. K. Makki , P. Reiher , K. Makki , N. Pissinou, S. Makki, Mobile and Wireless Network Security and Privacy, Springer Science, Business Media, LLC, 2007. [2] W. Stallings, Cryptography and Network Security Principles and Practices, Prentice Hall, Pearson Education, Third Edition, 2003. [3] W.-J. Hsu, T. Spyropoulos, K. Psounis and A. Helmy, Modelling Spatial and Temporal Dependencies of User Mobility in Wireless Mobile Networks, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 17(5), Oct. 2009. [4] P. Traynor, J.S. Shin, B. Madan, S. Phoha, T.LaPorta, Efficient Group Mobility for Heterogenous Sensor Networks, 2006. [5] Y. Ren, A. Boukerche, Modeling and Managing the Trust for Wireless and Mobile Ad hoc Networks, IEEE, 2008.