Security Framework for Opportunistic Networks

Opportunistic Networks have evolved as special class of mobile ad hoc and delay tolerant networks which have a vast range of applications. In opportunistic networks, the permanent links among the nodes are absent and delay is high. Due to self-organized nature of opportunistic networks, these networks have many security threats, e.g, how to protect the data confidentiality, integrity, privacy as well as the trust among the nodes. In this article, we present the specific security challenges to opportunistic networks and analyze related security requirement. Based on these discussions, we propose a general security framework for opportunistic networks and point out the future research direction in opportunistic networks.