Key Management Protocols in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have received tremendous attention in recent years because of their self-organization and self-maintenance capabilities. MANETs are networks that do not have an underlying fixed infrastructure. However, these networks tend to be vulnerable to a number of attacks. They don’t obey a centralized network management functionality; furthermore, the network topology changes dynamically. Therefore, security has become a primary concern in MANETs. The major problem in providing security services in such networks is how to manage cryptography keys, making key management a central component in MANETs. This chapter gives an overview of security in this kind of network and presents a number of MANETs key management protocols according to recent literature.