Improving the security of a secure anonymous routing protocol with authenticated key exchange for ad hoc networks

Abstract

In recent years, several anonymous routing protocols for wireless ad hoc networks have been proposed. In 2007, Lu, Cao, Wang, and Sun proposed a secure muting protocol with anonymity property and key exchange for ad hoc networks. However, in this paper, it is demonstrated that the so-called secure, anonymous key exchange protocol introduced by Lu et al. is vulnerable to a passive attack and, as a result, the anonymity property of the protocol may be compromised. A simple improvement is suggested to eliminate the vulnerability.