URSA: ubiquitous and robust access control for mobile ad hoc networks

Restricting network access of routing and packet forwarding to well-behaving nodes and denying access from misbehaving nodes are critical for the proper functioning of a mobile ad-hoc network where cooperation among all networking nodes is usually assumed. However, the lack of a network infrastructure, the dynamics of the network topology and node membership, and the potential attacks from inside the network by malicious and/or noncooperative selfish nodes make the conventional network access control mechanisms not applicable. We present URSA, a ubiquitous and robust access control solution for mobile ad hoc networks. URSA implements ticket certification services through multiple-node consensus and fully localized instantiation. It uses tickets to identify and grant network access to well-behaving nodes. In URSA, no single node monopolizes the access decision or is completely trusted. Instead, multiple nodes jointly monitor a local node and certify/revoke its ticket. Furthermore, URSA ticket certification services are fully localized into each node´s neighborhood to ensure service ubiquity and resilience. Through analysis, simulations, and experiments, we show that our design effectively enforces access control in the highly dynamic, mobile ad hoc network.