Skip to main content
eScholarship
Open Access Publications from the University of California

UCLA

UCLA Previously Published Works bannerUCLA

Mobility changes anonymity: new passive threats in mobile ad hoc networks

Abstract

Privacy in mobile ad hoc networks has new semantics in addition to

the conventional notions for infrastructure networks. Mobility enabled by

wireless communication has significantly changed privacy issues and anonymity

research in many ways. In particular, mobility requires ad hoc routing schemes

to transmit messages frequently in an open wireless medium. The routing traffic

facilitates adversaries in conducting various attacks threatening the network

security and privacy. In this work, we focus on passive routing attacks. We

present an extensive study on new anonymity threats and classify the

corresponding security demands into three new categories: (1) venue anonymity;

(2) privacy of ad hoc network topology; and (3) privacy of motion pattern.

These new aspects are all introduced by mobility and left unaddressed in fixed

infrastructure. This leads us to investigate new design principles. Our study

suggests that on-demand routing, identity-free routing, and neighborhood

traffic mixing are better design choices to defend against the new anonymity

threats in mobile networks. The paper also demonstrates through examples on the

visualization of the mobile anonymity attacks and on the quantification of the

effectiveness of the attacks. Copyright (c) 2006 John Wiley & Sons,

Ltd.

Many UC-authored scholarly publications are freely available on this site because of the UC's open access policies. Let us know how this access is important for you.

Main Content
For improved accessibility of PDF content, download the file to your device.
Current View