ECGK: An efficient clustering scheme for group key management in MANETs

Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (or MANETs) are flexible networks that are expected to support emerging group applications such as spontaneous collaborative activities and rescue operations. In order to provide secrecy to these applications, a common encryption key has to be established between group members of the application. This task is critical in MANETs because these networks have no fixed infrastructure, frequent node and link failures and a dynamic topology. The proposed approaches to cope with these characteristics aim to avoid centralized solutions and organize the network into clusters. However, the clustering criteria used in the literature are not always adequate for key management and security. In, this paper, we propose, a group key management framework based on a trust oriented clustering scheme. We show that trust is a relevant clustering criterion for group key management in MANETs. Trust information enforce authentication and is disseminated by the mobility of nodes. Furthermore, it helps to evict malicious nodes from the multicast session even if they are authorized members of the group. Simulation results show that our solution is efficient and typically adapted to mobility of nodes. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.