Analysis of the Secure Routing Protocol for Mobile Ad Hoc Network Route Discovery

With this work we analyze the Secure Routing Protocol (SRP) proposed by Papadimitratos and Haas as a means for securing source-driven route discovery in ad hoc networks. We discuss aws in SRP's design and expose SRP's shortcomings with respect to its security goals. We analyze SRP using both the canonical BAN logic analysis for cryptographic protocols and the CPAL-ES formal methods suite. Formal methods work in broadcast paradigms is a burgeoning research area. As such, we discuss the challenges this environment poses for formal methods analysis and suggest changes to CPAL-ES that will assist future ad hoc network protocol analyses. We introduce an attack which demonstrates SRP's vulnerabilities and our bloodhound solution. We abstract the attack and conclude that protocols developed in the likeness of SRP are equally vulnerable. Finally, we point out SRP's unrealistic assumptions that make it unfit for use in practical MANET applications.