Trustworthy Networks, Authentication, Privacy, and Security Models

Wireless networks are gaining popularity that comes with the occurrence of several networking technologies raising from personal to wide area, from centralized to distributed, and from infrastructure-based to infrastructure-less. Wireless data link characteristics such as openness of transmission media, makes these networks vulnerable to a novel set of security attacks, despite those that they inherit from wired networks. In order to ensure the protection of mobile nodes that are interconnected using wireless protocols and standards, it is essential to provide a depth study of a set of mechanisms and security models. In this chapter, we present the research studies and proposed solutions related to the authentication, privacy, trust establishment, and management in wireless networks. Moreover, we introduce and discuss the major security models used in a wireless environment.