Node Authentication Using BLS Signature in Distributed PKI Based MANETS

Abstract: Authenticating a node in mobile ad-hoc networks is a challenging task due to their dynamic and resource constraint infrastructure. For this purpose, MANETS adopt two kinds of approaches Public key cryptography and identity-based cryptography. In Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), Certificate Authority (CA) is responsible for key management. In order to adapt it to MANET, the job of the CA must be distributed. The master secret key is shared among the nodes of the MANET, to self-organize the network without a central authority.The key is shared based on Shamir secret sharing scheme with bivariate polynomial to make the MANET fully self-managed by nodes.In this paper, we considered PKI based scenario and proposed a new scheme to authenticate a node using BLS signature which is light weight compared to the existing schemes thus making it suitable for MANET.