  In a multi-hop mobile ad hoc network (MANET) mobile nodes communicate with
each other forming a cooperative radio network. Security remains a major
challenge for these networks due to their features of open medium, dynamically
changing topologies, reliance on cooperative algorithms, absence of centralized
monitoring points, and lack of any clear lines of defense. Most of the
currently existing security algorithms designed for these networks are
insecure, in efficient, and have low detection accuracy for nodes'
misbehaviour. In this paper, a new approach has been proposed to bring out the
complementary relationship between key distribution and misbehaviour detection
for developing an integrated security solution for MANETs. The redundancy of
routing information in ad hoc networks is utilized to develop a highly reliable
protocol that works even in presence of transient network partitioning and
Byzantine failure of nodes. The proposed mechanism is fully co-operative, and
thus it is more robust as the vulnerabilities of the election algorithms used
for choosing the subset of nodes for cooperation are absent. Simulation results
show the effectiveness of the proposed protocol.
