Cryptography-Based Misbehavior Detection and Trust Control Mechanism for Opportunistic Network Systems

Opportunistic networks (OppNets) are a subclass of delay tolerant networks and are characterized by intermittent end-to-end connections. The sparsity in the network and the resource constraint of devices always restricts the use of cryptographic solutions for security needs in the OppNets for thwarting selfishness of the nodes. The trust-based mechanisms are capable of providing social security in terms of access control in the network. But the trust-based protocols do not solve the problem of isolating, avoiding, and detecting the malicious intent nodes with the provision of security services such as authentication, confidentiality, and message integrity through cryptographic means. In this work, a robust and scalable infrastructure based security overlay is designed over the base trust-based routing for detecting malicious nodes and providing security services through the established cryptographic mechanism. The proposed security-based algorithm is general enough to accommodate and use latest cryptographic techniques in trust-based routing for ensuring more participation through building confidence in the network. The simulation results are taken using ONE simulator and the results confirm that the application of security overlay above the base trust-based protocol helps in increasing the average performance by 35%.