Session Key Agreement Protocol for End-to-End Security in MANET

Mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is an infrastructure-less network, consisting of wireless nodes without access points or base stations. Since mobile nodes in MANET move very easily and freely, MANET is appropriate for ubiquitous environment. But, from a security viewpoint, MANET is a very weak network since various security attacks against it such as eavesdropping or DoS (Denial-of-Service) attack can be more easily performed than against the wired network. In this paper, we design a key agreement protocol for end-to-end security between source node and destination node without any security infrastructure. Diffie-Hellman key agreement mechanism is combined with a concept of CGA (Cryptographically Generated Address) mechanism to provide source authentication service. Based on the IPv6’s IP auto-configuration, how to generate IPv6 address from the Diffie-Hellman key pair is explained, and a mechanism to generate session key for both authenticating nodes and protecting messages exchanged between them is suggested. We also evaluate the performance of our mechanism using NS2 (Network Simulator).