Mobile Ad hoc Network of Networks (MANoN) are a group of large autonomous wireless nodes communicating on a peer-to-peer basis in a heterogeneous environment with no pre-defined infrastructure. In fact, each node by itself is an ad hoc network with its own management. MANoNs are evolvable systems, which mean each ad hoc network has the ability to perform separately under its own policies and management without affecting the main system; therefore, new ad hoc networks can emerge and disconnect from the MANoN without conflicting with the policies of other networks. The unique characteristics of MANoN makes such networks highly vulnerable to security attacks compared with wired networks or even normal mobile ad hoc networks. This thesis presents a novel security-management system based upon the Recommendation ITU-T M.3400, which is used to evaluate, report on the behaviour of our MANoN and then support complex services our system might need to accomplish. Our security management will concentrate on three essential components: Security Administration, Prevention and Detection and Containment and Recovery. In any system, providing one of those components is a problem; consequently, dealing with an infrastructure-less MANoN will be a dilemma, yet we approached each set group of these essentials independently, providing unusual solutions for each one of them but concentrating mainly on the prevention and detection category. The contributions of this research are threefold. First, we defined MANoN Security Architecture based upon the ITU-T Recommendations: X.800 and X.805. This security architecture provides a comprehensive, end-to-end security solution for MANoN that could be applied to every wireless network that satisfies a similar scenario, using such networks in order to predict, detect and correct security vulnerabilities. The security architecture identifies the security requirements needed, their objectives and the means by which they could be applied to every part of the MANoN, taking into consideration the different security attacks it could face. Second, realising the prevention component by implementing some of the security requirements identified in the Security Architecture, such as authentication, authorisation, availability, data confidentiality, data integrity and non-repudiation has been proposed by means of defining a novel Security Access Control Mechanism based on Threshold Cryptography Digital Certificates in MANoN. Network Simulator (NS-2) is a real network environment simulator, which is used to test the performance of the proposed security mechanism and demonstrate its effectiveness. Our ACM-MANoN results provide a fully distributed security protocol that provides a high level of secure, available, scalable, flexible and efficient management services for MANoN. The third contribution is realising the detection component, which is represented by providing a Behavioural Detection Mechanism based on nodes behavioural observation engaged with policies. This behaviour mechanism will be used to detect malicious nodes acting to bring the system down. This approach has been validated using an attacks case study in an unknown military environment to cope with misbehaving nodes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:516065 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Al-Bayatti, Ali Hilal |
| Publisher | De Montfort University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/2086/2417 |
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