EISM: An Efficient ID-based Signcryption Scheme for Multi-PKG Multihop Wireless Networks of Mobile Hosts
Zhong Xu, Ruiping Ma, Shuai Liu and Wenbo He
Wireless ad hoc networks are self-configurable and autonomous networks and this type of networks serve as a good candidate to provide communications of many novel applications, including mission critical applications, mobile and pervasive computing, etc. Such networks are often composed of computation-constrained or resource-limited devices and without any underlying infrastructure. On the other hand, the wireless ad hoc networks must be efficient and secure. Recently, several security schemes for the wireless ad hoc networks have been proposed using identity-based signcryption schemes. However, these security schemes either suffer the efficiency problem or have the “key escrow” problem which is the inherent problem of the identity-based cryptography. Besides, most of schemes are based on a single Private Key Generator (PKG), which is not suitable for multi-PKG environment. In this study, we propose an Efficient Identity-based Signcryption scheme based on an online/offline cryptography for Multi-domain ad hoc networks(EISM). The new solution provides required security features and incurs small computational overhead to both the sender and the recipient when compared with the conventional signcryption schemes. Also it solves the “key escrow” problem using the pair-wise symmetric keys communication and is applicable to multi-PKGs environment.We use QualNet to quantify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme under two most popular attacks, redirection attack and rushing attack, both on AODV. We then apply the EISM sincryption scheme in AODV, and devise an efficient ID-based on-demand distance vector (EIDV) routing protocol. Simulation results show that our protocol is extremely robust to these two attacks and meanwhile provides similar performance with AODV. By comparison, AODV is more fragile in the presence of these two attacks.
Keywords: network security, ad hoc networks, identity-based signcryption, online/offline cryptography