ContactPerson: rsridhar@cse.buffalo.edu
Remote host: ny-amherst-c4-2-bg2b-1-174.bflony.adelphia.net
### Begin Citation ### Do not delete this line ###
%R 2004-09
%U /tmp/adhoc_security.pdf
%A Aruna Balasubramanian, Sumita Mishra and Ramalingam Sridhar
%T A Hybrid Approach to Key Management for Enhanced Security in Ad Hoc Networks
%D July 30, 2004
%I Department of Computer Science and Engineering, SUNY Buffalo
%K Ad hoc networks, Security, Key management, Symmetric cryptosystems, Asymmetric cryptosystems, Threshold cryptography, Clustering
%X Key management is one of the most challenging tasks in developing security solutions for wireless ad hoc networks. Most of the security primitives can only be realized if an efficient, robust and secure key generation and management system is developed. Symmetric key cryptosystems are difficult to incorporate in an ad hoc decentralized domain, and are not scalable. A public key cryptosystem is
computationally expensive and a decentralized certification service is essential for its deployment. In this paper, we present a locally symmetric/globally asymmetric key management solution for wireless ad hoc networks that overcomes the limitations of both. The proposed hybrid
approach does not require prior trust assumptions or the presence of a centralized certification authority. Preliminary analysis and results indicate that this approach can achieve a better performance when compared
with the traditional solutions. We show that our approach is scalable, and robust with respect to node failures, topology changes, node speed and loss of connectivity.