Identification in infrastructureless networks

Abstract

Confidential communications require entities to mutually authenticate and establish secure communication channels, where the latter requires secret keys to be established between entities. Both -mutual authentication and secure communication- can be achieved by non- revoked public key certificates. However, in infrastructureless networks -such as ad hoc networks-, online trusted third parties (TTP) may not be present that can distribute the required information to verify the revocation status of a certificate. This can prevent confidentiality from being provided. In this paper we define a protocol which permits nodes in an ad hoc network without a shared secret key and without guaranteed access to a TTP, firstly, to mutually authenticate and, secondly, to verify the revocation status of a certificate. © 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.