Buiding a trusted community for mobile ad hoc networks using friends recommendation

Abstract

The success of authentication mechanisms, intrusion detection and response systems, and other security measures to protect MANET from attack are very much dependant on nodes’ cooperation. Ensuring a node’s cooperation is very challenging in a MANET environment because of the nature of such a network; consisting of a set of anonymous nodes that operate independently, without the existence of a central authority to enforce them to cooperate. One of the solutions for this problem is by creating a trust chain between nodes to create a trusted community. This paper discusses some of the existing studies that have been proposed to overcome this issue and proposes a novel trust framework based upon a friendship concept. Results from simulation experiments proved that the proposed trust framework is capable of creating a trusted community in MANET, whilst at the same time addressing limitations of existing trust frameworks.