Friend-based secure routing through challenges in mobile ad hoc networks

This paper proposes a Friend-based security scheme for efficient routing in mobile ad hoc networks. The idea behind this technique is the establishment of friend networks in the same way as the formation of friends in real life scenarios. The algorithm provides authentication of nodes by sending challenges and creating friend lists of nodes that complete the challenge. Friends are rated on the basis of the amount of data they transfer through themselves and according to the rating of other friends, which is obtained during the friend list sharing process. The data is finally routed through the route with the greatest number of trusted friends. One of the greatest advantages of this technique is that the nodes do not need to work in the promiscuous mode. The information about the malicious nodes is gathered effectively by using challenges. This reduces the overhead on the network significantly. Through various simulation experiments it has been found that the proposed algorithm works very efficiently in terms of detecting the malicious nodes and also allowing lesser number of packets to be routed through these detected malicious nodes.