An ECC-based two-party authenticated key agreement protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

Abstract

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are known to be unprotected due to the nature of message propagation and the openness of public channel. Another important characteristic of MANETs is their being basically energy constrained. While it is known that symmetric key cryptography provides a high degree of secrecy and efficiency, but has a number of significant difficulties for the MANET domain in key distribution, key management, scalability and provision of non-repudiation. Public key cryptography (PKC) on other hand provides solutions to the problems inherent in symmetric key cryptography with authenticated key agreement protocols. However the constraints of MANETs such as mobility of nodes, lack of network services and servers make such a proposition difficult. In this paper, we propose a PKC based new energy efficient twoparty mutual authenticated key agreement protocol suitable for MANETs. Its security is based on the elliptic curve discrete logarithm assumption.We provide proof here for the security of the proposed protocol and show its relative better performance when compared with other relevant protocols. © 2011 Academy Publisher.