This work proposes a new distributed and self-organized authentication scheme for Mobile Ad-hoc NETworks (MANETs). Apart from describing all its components, special emphasis is placed on proving that the proposal fulfils most requirements derived from the special characteristics of MANETs, including limited physical protection of broadcast medium, frequent route changes caused by mobility, and lack of structured hierarchy. Interesting conclusions are obtained from an analysis of simulation experiments in different scenarios.
Security in collaborative peer groups is an active research topic. Most previous work focused on key management without addressing an important pre-requisite: admission control, i.e., how to securely admit a new member. This paper represents an initial attempt to sketch out an admission control framework suitable for different flavors of peer groups and match them with appropriate cryptographic techniques and protocols. Open problems and directions for future work are identified and discussed.