Modeling key agreement in multi-hop ad hoc networks

Securing multicast communications in ad hoc networks has become one of the most challenging research directions in the areas of wireless networking and security. This is especially true as ad hoc networks are emerging as the desired environment for an increasing number of civilian, commercial and military applications, also addressing an increasingly large number of users. In this paper we study a very basic security question for Ad Hoc Networks: Key Agreement against passive adversaries. Despite being a widely studied area in wired networks, the problem becomes significantly more challenging for ad hoc networks, and even more for sensor networks, due to lack of trusted entities, infrastructures, full connectivity, routing structures, and due to severe limitations on the resources and capabilities of network nodes. In this paper we perform