Lightweight Cryptography for Distributed PKI Based MANETS

Abstract: Because of lack of infrastructure and Central Authority(CA), secure communication is a challenging job in MANETs. A lightweight security solution is needed in MANET to balance its nodes resource tightness and mobility feature. The role of CA should be decentralized in MANET because the network is managed by the nodes themselves without any fixed infrastructure and centralized authority. In this paper, we created a distributed Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) using Shamir secret sharing mechanism which allows the nodes of the MANET to have a share of its private key. The traditional PKI protocols require centralized authority and heavy computing power to manage public and private keys, thus making them not suitable for MANETs. To establish a secure communication for the MANET nodes, we proposed a lightweight crypto protocol which requires limited resources, making it suitable for MANETs.