Enforcing Security in Mobile Networks: Challenges and Solutions

• Main Authors: DENG, Robert H., BAO, Feng, QIU, Ying, ZHOU, Jianying
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2006
• Subjects: Information Security
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/235; https://doi.org/10.1002/0471755591.ch14
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Mobile networking brings two important benefits to its users: un-tethered communication and mobility. While the convenience of un-tethered communication may be obvious, providing support for mobility is subtler. From a user's perspective, mobility translates to an ability to be reachable in spite of movement across networks, as well as an ability to maintain existing communication during such movements. However, risks are inherent in any wireless and mobile environment. In this chapter, we look at some generic security issues in mobile networks and discuss their implications. In order for the reader to have a better appreciation of the challenges in securing mobile networks, we provide an in-depth review on techniques to protect binding update operation from redirect attacks in Mobile IP. Mobile IP is an IEFT specification to provide mobility support over the Internet and its binding update operation allows a mobile node to inform its home agent and its correspondent nodes about its new care-of address. We present various methods for securing the binding update operation, analyze their security and performance, and point out possible future research directions.