SECURITY AND COMMUNICATION NETWORKSSecurity Comm. Networks 2010; 3:359–361Published online in Wiley Online Library(wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/sec.202

Guest Editorial

Security in ad hoc networks and pervasive computing

By Isaac Z. Wu, X.-Y. Li, M. Song and C.-M. Liu

Pervasive computing is an exciting and bloom-ing research field, in which innovative techniquesand applications are continuously emerging andaim to provide ambient and personalized servicesto users with high quality. Ad hoc networks arewireless, self-organizing systems formed by co-operating nodes within communication range of eachother that form temporary networks. Their topol-ogy is dynamic, decentralized, ever changing andthe nodes may move around arbitrarily. The lastfew years have witnessed a wealth of research ideason ad hoc networking that are moving rapidly intoimplemented standards. Technology under develop-ment for ad hoc networks and pervasive computingis making important steps toward this end goalpossible.

However, the security concerns remain a seriousimpediment to widespread adoption. The underlyingradio communication medium for wireless networkprovides serious exposure to attacks against wirelessnetworks. Wireless ad hoc networks usually cannotdepend on traditional infrastructure found in enterpriseenvironments such as dependable power sources, highbandwidth, continuous connectivity, common networkservices, well-known membership, static configura-tion, system administration, and physical security.Finally, throw in malicious adversaries with Byzan-tine collusion threats and you have a very interestingand challenging problem. Without adequate security,enterprises will not be able to profit from the useof wireless ad hoc networks and pervasive com-puting environment, defense organizations might beunable to guarantee the safety of their personnel inbattlefield scenarios, and wireless ad hoc networksand pervasive computing will remain on the draw-ing board even if the other problems associated with

them are solved. This special issue is focused onvarious aspects of security in ad hoc networks andpervasive computing research and development toreport both in-depth research and applications-orientedworks.

The special issue is intended to foster state-of-the-art research in the area of security in ad hoc networksand pervasive computing.

The aim of this special issue is to present a collectionof high quality research papers that report the latestresearch advances in security of ad hoc. In this specialissue, we selected seven papers, which can demonstrateadvanced works in this field. A detailed overview of theselected works is given below.

The first paper, A Lightweight Secure Data Trans-mission Protocol for Resource Constrained Devices,presents a simple, lightweight, but robust securityprotocol based on the backward property of RC4stream cipher. The proposed protocol provides dataconfidentiality, data authentication, data integrity, anddata freshness with low overhead and simple opera-tion, allows packets be received in an arbitrary order,achieves semantic security, and does not require fre-quent key renew.

The second paper, PAPA-UIC: A Design Approachand a Framework for Secure Mobile Ad-hoc Networks,proposes a new design approach and a framework forsecuring a practical type of MANETs. The frameworkis named PAPA-UIC. The paper proposes a securerouting protocol and solutions to general problems ofidentity-based cryptography. The routing protocol hasseveral improvements over existing ones.

The third paper, RFIDGuard: A Lightweight Pri-vacy and Authentication Protocol for Passive RFIDTags, introduces a protocol which requires little com-putation and achieves both privacy and authentication

Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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simultaneously. The lightweight and secure nature ofthe RFIDGuard protocol make it particularly suitablefor supply chain management.

The fourth paper, Using Hidden Markov Modelto Detect Rogue Access Points, proposes a statisticalbased approach to detect rogue access points using aHidden Markov Model, which is applied to passivelymeasure packet-header data collected at a gatewayrouter. The main idea is to process the sequence ofpacket traces in order to distinguish the normal pack-ets from the abnormal ones. The approach is scalableand non-intrusive, requiring little deployment cost andeffort, and is easy to manage and maintain.

The fifth paper, Defending Sybil Attacks Basedon Neighboring Relations in Wireless Sensor Net-works, develops a mechanism to protect a WSNfrom Sybil attacks without using any authentication-based method. Furthermore, the detection approachrequires no specialized hardware or support devices.The feature that a malicious node creates many fakeidentities is exploited to distinguish legitimate nodesfrom Sybil/malicious nodes. Since all of the fake iden-tities forged by the same malicious node are associatedwith the same physical device, they will have thesame legitimate neighbors. Therefore, by collectingthe neighboring information of the suspected victimof the Sybil attacks, the legitimate nodes which are theneighbors of the malicious nodes can be determined. Incontrast to existing protection schemes, this approachhas no requirement for shared keys, secret information,or special hardware support.

The sixth paper, An Autonomous Attestation Token toSecure Mobile Agents in Disaster Response, introducesthe Autonomous Attestation Token (AAT), a hardwaretoken for mobile computing devices that is capable ofguaranteeing the trusted state of a limited set of deviceswithout relying on a networked service. The paper pro-poses a Local Attestation protocol with user interactionthat in conjunction with the AAT prevents unautho-rized access to an emergency mobile agent platform. Inaddition, the paper sketches a possible solution whichintegrates trusted computing to leverage ad hoc net-works and peer-to-peer systems to provide a robustcommunication platform.

The seventh paper, Building Advanced Applicationswith the Belgian eID, introduces the Belgian Elec-tronic Identity Card. The card enables Belgian citizensto digitally prove their identity and to sign electronicdocuments. This paper presents two reusable exten-sions to the Belgian eID technology that opens up newopportunities for application developers. First, a secureand ubiquitously accessible remote storage service is

presented. Second, it is shown how the eID card canbe used to issue new certificates. The feasibility andreusability of both extensions are validated throughthe development of several applications in differentdomains.

In conclusion, this issue of Security in Ad hoc offersa groundbreaking view into the recent advances insecure ad hoc networks. This issue offers both aca-demic and industry appeal the former as a basis towardfuture research directions, and the latter toward viablecommercial applications.

Finally, we would like to express our gratitude tothe Editor-in-Chief, Professor Hsiao-Hwa Chen for hisadvice, patience, and encouragements since the begin-ning until the final stage. Special thanks go to Michellein Wiley during the production. We thank all anony-mous reviewers who spent much of their precious timereviewing all the papers. Their timely reviews and com-ments greatly helped us select the best papers in thisspecial issue. We also thank all authors who have sub-mitted their papers for consideration for this issue.

We hope you will enjoy reading the great selectionof papers in this issue.

Isaac Z. WuInformation Department

Beijing Forest University, ChinaE-mail: iszzwu@gmail.com

X.-Y. LiComputer Science Department

Illinois Institute of Technology, USA

M. SongElectrical and Computer Engineering Department

Old Dominion University, USA

C.-M. LiuComputer Science and Information Engineering

Department, National Taipei University ofTechnology, Taiwan

Authors’ Biographies

Dr. Isaac Z. Wu received his PhDdegree in computer science fromBeijing Inst. of Tech, China, in 2006.He is a lecturer of Department ofInformation Science and Technologyat the Beijing Forestry University.His current research interests includeembedded systems, computer networksecurity, and algorithm design. He

serves as reviewer for several conferences.

Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Security Comm. Networks 2010; 3:359–361

DOI: 10.1002/sec

EDITORIAL 361

Prof. X-Y. Li received two BS degreesfrom Tsinghua University, China, in1995 and the MS and PhD degrees incomputer science from the University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2000and 2001, respectively. He has beenan associate professor since 2006 inthe Department of Computer Science,Illinois Institute of Technology. He is

also a visiting professor of Microsoft Research Asia fromMay, 2007 to August 2008. His research interests spanwireless ad hoc networks, game theory, computationalgeometry, and cryptography and network security. He haspublished approximately 80 conference papers in top-qualityconferences such as ACM MobiCom, ACM MobiHoc, ACMSODA, ACM STOC, IEEE INFOCOM, etc. He has morethan 50 journal papers published or accepted for publication.In 2008, he published a monograph "Wireless Ad Hoc andSensor Networks: Theory and Applications". He is an editorof Ad Hoc & Sensor Wireless Networks: An InternationalJournal, and Networks: An International Journal. He servedin various positions (such as the conference chair, localarrangement chair, financial chair, session chair, or TPCmember) at a number of international conferences such asAAIM, IEEE INFOCOM, ACM MobiHoc, ACM STOC,and ACM MobiCom. He is a senior member of the IEEE.

Dr. M. Song is an Associate Professorin the Department of Electrical andComputer Engineering at Old DominionUniversity. He received his PhD inComputer Science from the Univer-sity of Toledo in 2001. His researchinterests include protocols design andperformance analysis of mobile ad hocnetworks and wireless sensor networks,

computer networks security, cognitive networking, wirelesscommunications, and packet switch architectures. Dr. Songis the recipient of NSF CAREER award. He received earlytenure and promotion in June of 2007. He is the founder anddirector of the Wireless Communications and NetworkingLaboratory. Dr. Song is an IEEE Senior member. He isthe Editor-in-Chief of International Journal on ComputerNetworks and the Editor/Guest Editor of 10 internationaljournals.

Prof. C-M. Liu received his PhDin Computer Sciences from PurdueUniversity in 2002. He is an asso-ciate professor in the Department ofComputer Science and InformationEngineering, National Taipei Universityof Technology, TAIWAN. He is amember of Upsilon Pi Epsilon HonorSociety in Computer Science since

1998. His research interests include parallel and distributedcomputation, data management and data dissemination indifferent wireless environments, ad hoc and sensor networks,and analysis and design of algorithms.

Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Security Comm. Networks 2010; 3:359–361

DOI: 10.1002/sec