Privacy Preserving Communication in MANETs

Abstract— Mobile ad hoc networks often support sensitive applications. These applications may require that users’ identity, location, and correspondents be kept secret. This is a challenge in a MANET because of the cooperative nature of the network and broadcast nature of the communication media. In this paper, we propose a Privacy Preserving Communication System (PPCS) which provides a comprehensive solution to anonymize communication endpoints, keep the location and identifier of a node unlinkable, and mask the existence of communication flows. We present an analysis of the security of PPCS against passive internal attackers, provide a qualitative discussion on its strength against external attackers, and characterize its performance trade-offs. The simulation results demonstrate that PPCS has only 3% lower packet delivery ratio than existing multi-path routing protocols, while effectively providing privacy service in MANETs.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: SECON
• Authors: Heesook Choi, Patrick Drew McDaniel, Thomas F. La Porta
• Keywords: Mobile Ad Hoc Networks, Passive Internal Attackers, Privacy Preserving Communication, SECON 2007