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Mitigating Eavesdropping Attack Using Secure Key Management Scheme in Wireless Mesh Networks

Farah Kandah1, Yashaswi Singh1, and Weiyi Zhang3
1. Department of Computer Science, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58105
2. AT&T Labs - Research, Middletown, NJ 07748

Abstract— Wireless mesh network (WMN) is a rapid de-ployed, self organized and multi-hop wireless networks. However, the wireless and distributed natures of WMN make it subject to various kinds of malicious attacks, which raise a great challenge in securing these networks. Most existing security mechanisms are based on cryptographic keys where a high degree key management services are in demand. In this paper, we present an effective secure key management scheme (SKeMS) which seeks an encryption key assignment such that the induced network is securely key connected and well protected against potential malicious eavesdropping attacks. Compared to previous work, our scheme assigns the available encryption keys among all the nodes in the network. Our simulation results show that our scheme outperforms previous schemes through providing a network that is resistant to malicious eavesdropping attack.
 
Index Terms— Wireless mesh network, secure key manage-ment, adversary, malicious eavesdropping attack

Cite:Farah Kandah, Yashaswi Singh, and Weiyi Zhang , "Mitigating Eavesdropping Attack Using Secure Key Management Scheme in Wireless Mesh Networks," Journal of Communications, vol. 7, no.8, pp.596-605, 2012. Doi: 10.4304/jcm.7.8.596-605