An access control framework for semi-infrastructured Ad hoc networks

A semi-infrastructured ad hoc network is a wireless MANET subnetwork connected to a structured backbone network (LAN). This kind of network is becoming popular for low cost implementation and practicability issues. But the security is being considered as the major bottleneck of such semi-infrastructured Ad Hoc network. Uncontrolled access medium, dynamically changing topology, mobility of the hosts in the Ad Hoc mode challenges the security issues if the overall organizational network. In this paper a framework has been proposed to enforce Access Control Policy over such network. Both reactive and proactive routing is considered to implement the access control mechanism. The basis of the framework lies on distributed enforcement of the global access policy through different Policy Enforcing Nodes (PEN). The backbone network contains the Global Policy Management Server (GPMS) and Authentication Server. PENs after being selected and authorized by the GPMS take the responsibility to distribute the Access Control Rules to different Ad Hoc nodes. We have considered an underlying trust model is already implemented over the Ad Hoc network and the nodes are capable to handle symmetric key encryption for Message Authentication. The recent advancement of the research in MANET con rms the assumptions are valid.