Patent Application
20070147620
The present invention relates to routing security and more particularly to secure routing key management for on-demand routing protocols in the infrastructure-based multi-hop wireless network works.
As wireless communications networks become more prevalent, security continues to be a major concern to both communication network providers and end users. This is most evident when using a mobile wireless network where the security environment can offer the greatest challenges since data may be readily received and manipulated by many nodes. One focus of the concern is on routing security where the goal is to prevent a malicious user or “hacker” from attempting to disrupt data path routing functions or to cause legitimate data packets to be incorrectly routed.
Many designs and security schemes have been proposed to secure network routing protocols. In those schemes, each device proactively signs its routing messages using cryptographic functions. These include such methods as a message authentication code using a symmetric key algorithm or a digital signature via an asymmetric key algorithm. These methods allow collaborative devices to efficiently authenticate any legitimate routing information. The most difficult part of this problem is in finding a simple but secure key management mechanism. Known prior art solutions such as pre-set private keys or public key pairs in each participating device are difficult to implement since they require re-keying and maintaining related support facilities such public key infrastructure (PKI). Accordingly, a new and less complex approach is needed for secure routing key management.
The accompanying figures, where like reference numerals refer to identical or functionally similar elements throughout the separate views and which together with the detailed description below are incorporated in and form part of the specification, serve to further illustrate various embodiments and to explain various principles and advantages all in accordance with the present invention.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
Before describing in detail embodiments that are in accordance with the present invention, it should be observed that the embodiments reside primarily in combinations of method steps and apparatus components related to key management for secure on-demand routing protocols for use in a wireless mesh network. Accordingly, the apparatus components and method steps have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.
In this document, relational terms such as first and second, top and bottom, and the like may be used solely to distinguish one entity or action from another entity or action without necessarily requiring or implying any actual such relationship or order between such entities or actions. The terms “comprises,” “comprising,” or any other variation thereof, are intended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion, such that a process, method, article, or apparatus that comprises a list of elements does not include only those elements but may include other elements not expressly listed or inherent to such process, method, article, or apparatus. An element proceeded by “comprises . . . a” does not, without more constraints, preclude the existence of additional identical elements in the process, method, article, or apparatus that comprises the element.
It will be appreciated that embodiments of the invention described herein may be comprised of one or more conventional processors and unique stored program instructions that control the one or more processors to implement, in conjunction with certain non-processor circuits, some, most, or all of the functions of key management for secure on-demand routing protocols for use in a wireless mesh network described herein. The non-processor circuits may include, but are not limited to, a radio receiver, a radio transmitter, signal drivers, clock circuits, power source circuits, and user input devices. As such, these functions may be interpreted as steps of a method to perform to key management for secure on-demand routing protocols for use in a wireless mesh network. Alternatively, some or all functions could be implemented by a state machine that has no stored program instructions, or in one or more application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), in which each function or some combinations of certain of the functions are implemented as custom logic. Of course, a combination of the two approaches could be used. Thus, methods and means for these functions have been described herein. Further, it is expected that one of ordinary skill, notwithstanding possibly significant effort and many design choices motivated by, for example, available time, current technology, and economic considerations, when guided by the concepts and principles disclosed herein will be readily capable of generating such software instructions and programs and ICs with minimal experimentation.
In recent years, mobile wireless networks have received tremendous attention in the fields of public safety and intelligent transportation systems as well as in other industrial applications. In most of these deployments, access to the wired networks is needed. Even for the peer-to-peer applications where a mobile wireless device communicates with another mobile wireless device, the wired infrastructure may still be needed for improving the performance by reducing wireless hops of two far apart communicating wireless devices. In the design of such multi-hop wireless networks, all mobile wireless devices will maintain continuous connectivity with an Internet Access Point (IAP) through either a wireless router or other mobile wireless devices. Therefore, the performance of the communication between wired networks and mobile wireless devices, or mobile wireless devices to distant mobile wireless devices, can be significantly improved.
Turning now to
In hop-by-hop encryption, the data is decrypted and re-encrypted in each intermediate device as it travels through the network. In contrast, end-to-end encryption involves encrypting data traffic only at the original source device and decrypting in the final destination device within a wireless transmission region. In hop-by-hop protection, data and routing packets can be secured with the same security association between any neighboring devices. This might be viewed as the establishment of security before the routing procedure. However, this approach will inevitably introduce unnecessary delay in both normal data transmission and the hand-off process when the data route is changed. It also restricts the intermediate nodes to only the trusted devices in regard to the two communication end devices.
In the end-to-end encryption, the data is only encrypted in the source and decrypted in the destination. The encrypted packets are forwarded in the intermediate devices along the path without any security processing. Since the routing information is needed before the data packets can be transported, if using end-to-end protection, it is necessary and preferable to separate data security and routing security with different designs. Both of these processes have different security requirements since they address different threats in the network. Moreover, a route must first be found before devices which are at least two multi-hops away can initiate a security association and negotiation message exchange which is used to establish data protection. If a separate routing security mechanism is in place, the end-to-end data traffic security protection will be the more desirable approach compared to the hop-to-hop encryption techniques.
With regard to an on-demand routing protocol and its vulnerability, there are various types of routing protocols that can be used in such wireless mesh networks. On-demand routing protocols such as dynamic source routing protocol (DSR), ad hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) and their variants are popular in these types of networks due to their low overhead and simplicity. On-demand routing protocols create routes only when desired by the source node. When a node requires a route to a destination, it initiates a route discovery process within the network. This process is completed once a route is found or all possible route permutations have been examined. Once a route has been established, it is maintained by some form of a route maintenance procedure until either the destination becomes inaccessible (along every path from the source) or until the route is no longer desired. Compared to “proactive” routing protocols, on-demand routing protocols have lower routing overhead and work more effectively in complex mobile environments. Thus, the present invention operates to secure the on-demand routing protocols including its variances. This would include such protocols as the hybrid routing protocol for mesh scalable routing as described in published United States Patent Publication Number 2004/0143842, by Avinash Joshi entitled “System and Method For Achieving Continuous Connectivity to an Access Point or Gateway in a Wireless Network Following an On-demand Routing Protocol and to Perform Smooth Handoff of Mobile Terminals between Fixed Terminals in the Network,” which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety.
A number of routing messages are typically used in an on-demand routing protocol. These include route request (RREQ), route reply (RREP), route error (RERR), and a “hello” message. During the routing discovery phase, a route request is broadcast to all nodes. The nodes receiving the request can rebroadcast it if it is not the destination node as specified in the message or does not have a valid route to the destination. A route reply will be sent back to the originator in the destination node or in an intermediate node which has a valid route to the destination. The route request and reply messages have a field hop count which will control how far the route message will travel. They may also have a field called a routing metric which is used to collect the total routing cost for the route. A route error message is then used to inform upstream nodes in a route that the destination in the route has become unreachable. A “hello” message is also used to discover neighbors and related link metric.
There are many ways in which a malicious user can disrupt these normal on-demand routing procedures. These include but are not limited to:
1) sending false route error messages in order to eliminate the working routes;
2) sending false route reply messages in order to wage selective forwarding or sinkhole attack; and
3) modifying the routing messages with incorrect routing information.
In such a potentially unfriendly environment, it is desirable to add security protection to the routing protocol. Two such security properties are message origination protection and content integrity which shall minimize the impacts of forging and modification in the protocol. These two properties can be acquired if a same symmetric key is made available to the routing protocol participating devices. A security extension can be added to each routing message and detection of the attack then can be possible. There are several components in the key management scheme for secure routing protocols of the present invention, these include:
1) two types of routes are defined: secured and temporary routes;
2) different processing procedures for routing messages with different risk levels;
3) a central key distribution server located in the wired network; and
4) an indexed key model to allow for a flexible re-keying operation.
In operation, a secured route is defined as a route which is established through secured routing message exchange. The secured route is used for both user data traffic and control/management traffic in the network. A temporary route is a route that is established through an unsecured routing message exchange, and is identified with a special flag or indication in the route table. The temporary route has a limited life time and is only used for authentication and key management messages when a wireless device joins the network initially for the first time. The temporary routes may be established only upon certain conditions. These include when a device requests to join the network, and needs a route to an IAP for authentication and key establishment, and the reverse routes are established for sending back a route reply and authentication message from the IAP, then the temporary routes are limited in their life time and the traffic to be sent using them. Preferably, the authentication and key management messages are the only traffic which can be delivered along these routes. Once a device has obtained its first security key for the routing protocol, it can re-initiate a route request for that temporary route with the secured routing messages. Once the secured route is created, the corresponding temporary route will be deleted from the routing tables.
Thus, the temporary route establishment will not change the normal secured route maintenance. The temporary unsecured route mechanism will limit security risk in the routing of unsecured devices. As an example, a new joining device may be a malicious device which pretends to be another authorized device in the network. In accordance with the present invention, the only message that can be sent without the security extension is the RREQ to the IAP. When a temporary route is set up between the malicious device and the IAP, only the authorized device can pass the authentication and get the routing key, hence even the temporary route is set up, the malicious node can not get the key to participate the future routing activity. Consequently, it can not make any attacks as described herein. Conversely, if the new joining device is an authorized device and it is trying to establish a temporary route, the malicious device can cause this operation either to be unsuccessful or cause a wrong temporary route to be established if the malicious device is the next hop of the new joining device. The joining device will fail at initial authentication to the IAP with the wrong temporary route. The new device will try to use a different neighboring device to establish the initial temporary route until all the neighboring devices are queried. If there is at least one authorized neighboring device, the new joining device establish a true temporary route to the IAP.
Ideally, all the routing messages can be protected with the security extension. Hence, the need for the temporary route requires the limited unsecured routing messages which apply the following rules:
1 All the Route Error (RERR), Hello Message messages should be secured and shall be discarded if they are not secured or fail a security checkup;
2) The unsecured Route Request (RREQ) can only be originated from the new devices before joining the network. And the unsecured Route Reply (RREP) can only be used to response to the unsecured RREQ messages. Other RREQ and RREP should be secured.
By enforcing these rules, the risk of attacks as described herein will be eliminated. The keys used for securing routing messages are generated in a key distribution center (KDC). The KDC is located in the wired network as in
To summarize, the present invention identifies the security risks in the on-demand routing protocol, where a novel key management method is used to secure the on-demand routing and its variances in a wireless mesh network. This is accomplished by securing on-demand routing deployed in an infrastructure-based mobile multi-hop wireless networks. The method exploits particular features of the target routing protocols by restricting the usage of certain more vulnerable messages in the initial key setting up stages. Both secured routes and temporary route types are defined based on whether or not the secured routing messages are used in the route discovery. The temporary routes are only used for performing authentication and secure routing key initialization between the unsecured wireless device and an Internet Access Point (IAP).
In the foregoing specification, specific embodiments of the present invention have been described. However, one of ordinary skill in the art appreciates that various modifications and changes can be made without departing from the scope of the present invention as set forth in the claims below. Accordingly, the specification and figures are to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense, and all such modifications are intended to be included within the scope of present invention. The benefits, advantages, solutions to problems, and any element(s) that may cause any benefit, advantage, or solution to occur or become more pronounced are not to be construed as a critical, required, or essential features or elements of any or all the claims. The invention is defined solely by the appended claims including any amendments made during the pendency of this application and all equivalents of those claims as issued.
