Secure autoconfiguration and public-key distribution for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

Security is extremely important for the deployment of a mobile ad-hoc networks (MANET) due to its openness to attackers, the absence of an infrastructure, and the lack of centralized administration. Most research efforts have been focused on secure routing protocols, the distributed certificate authority, and key distribution, while a few projects have focused on secure autoconfiguration. However, the importance of integration of a secure autoconfiguration and public-key distribution has been neglected. This paper presents a secure autoconfiguration and public-key distribution algorithm to achieve uniqueness of address allocation and secure public-key distribution when a new node joins a MANET, which provides the bootstrapping for building a distributed certificate authority (DCA) in the network where a trust relationship is absent.