Keyless security in wireless networks

Abstract

Security in mobile wireless networks is difficult to achieve because of vulnerability of the links, inadequate physical protection, dynamically changing topology and the sporadic nature of the connectivity. The change in topology results in the change of trust relationships among the communicating nodes and as a consequence any security solution with a static configuration will not suffice. Key management and related protocols play a vital role and are the basis of security in many distributed systems. Cryptographic keys require dedicated mechanisms in place for their exchange before substantial security can be achieved; subsequently this exchange results in additional overhead and is prone to serious compromise of the security. The drawbacks of key oriented cryptographic techniques have resulted in the demand to develop keyless security schemes. This paper presents a novel keyless security scheme Reaction Automata Direct Graph (RADG), which is based on automata direct graph and reaction states. The novelty of RADG lies in the fact that it does not require any key to perform the cryptographic operations thus making it a feasible scheme for large wireless systems. Paper presents implementation of RADG and the results have shown that the hamming distance between individual cipher texts differ significantly a lot making the process of code breaking within the large systems very difficult compared to the schemes that rely on classical cryptography. The Security analysis of RADG proves that it is cryptographically sound in terms of confidentiality, integrity and non-repudiation.