MTPKM: Multipart Trust Based Public Key Management Technique to Reduce Security Vulnerability in Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a collection of self-configured movable nodes. Keys have to be securely handled and maintained and there are various techniques available in MANET for efficient key generation and distribution. Trying to keep the keys always protected during transmission is a difficult issue. A multipart trust based public key management (MTPKM) is intended to gather a requisite stage of security, in addition to convene better output necessities like service accessibility and message overhead exclusive of communication on known certificate authority. An optimal trust threshold is associated with all the nodes to reduce security vulnerabilities like the public key compromise and key leakage. MTPKM does not support trusted the third party hence it finds the most trusted neighbor node which satisfies the trust threshold condition to certifying the key generated. In turn, the neighbor node again ensures the confidence of the node which is requesting to certify the public key. The requesting node and certificate issuer node must exhibit a mutual trust relationship. The proposed trust-based scheme is simulated and the performance is evaluated. It is observed that the proposed scheme surpasses other trust-based models in terms of availability and security vulnerability.