An Addressing Scheme to Support Untraceability in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

The movement of nodes in mobile ad hoc networks can be inferred by inspecting unique addresses embedded into exchanged messages. If these addresses are fixed, tracing a message to a single source is trivial and movement can be easily uncovered by listening to transmissions in the area of interest. The ease in which such traces can be obtained creates a fertile environment for information misuse and privacy violation. In this paper, a scheme based on address randomization is proposed to reduce traceability in mobile ad hoc networks. The novel feature of the scheme consists of producing new addresses without disrupting communication that relies on keeping neighbor state. This feature is obtained by randomizing addresses progressively, bit by bit, until the desired uncorrelation between old and new address is obtained.