Whisper - A lightweight anonymous communication mechanism in wireless ad-hoc networks Conference Paper uri icon

abstract

  • With the rapid development of Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) technology, anonymity has received increased attention in this area. Design of anonymous communication systems in MANETs needs to take the characteristics of wireless communication into account. A malicious node who issues passive attacks such as eavesdrops could be more effective in MANETs than in wired networks in that it can overhear all data packets of its neighbors. We propose a lightweight anonymous communication mechanism - Whisper, to protect the anonymity in ad-hoc networks. In Whisper, a source node always sends the data packet to its nearest neighbor. After then, the packets are forwarded with a certain probability to the next nearest neighbor or the destination. Whisper does not depend on public key facilities, which are too expensive for MANETs in term of computational complexity. We analyze the strategies that an adversary may use to attacks anonymity, and the counterattack approaches.

published proceedings

  • ICWN '05: PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2005 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON WIRELESS NETWORKS

author list (cited authors)

  • Cai, J. F., You, H. Y., Lu, B., Pooch, U., & Lu, M.

complete list of authors

  • Cai, JF||You, HY||Lu, B||Pooch, U||Lu, M

editor list (cited editors)

  • Yang, L. T., Arabnia, H. R., & Wang, L.

publication date

  • December 2005