Security-Enhanced Dynamic Routing with Cryptographic Techniques

Security has become one of the major issues for data communication over wired and wireless networks. A dynamic routing algorithm has being proposed that could randomize delivery paths for data transmission. The algorithm is easy to implement and compatible with popular routing protocols, such as the Routing Information Protocol in wired networks and Destination-Sequenced Distance Vector protocol in wireless networks, without introducing extra control messages. Our security-enhanced dynamic routing could be used with cryptography-based system designs to further improve the security of data transmission over networks. In this paper, we present a novel encryption-less algorithm to enhance security in transmission of data in networks. The algorithm uses an intuitively simple idea of a jigsaw puzzle to break the transformed data into multiple parts where these parts form the pieces of the puzzle. The algorithm is designed to provide information-theoretic (that is, unconditional) security by the use of a one-time pad like scheme so that no intermediate or unintended node can obtain the entire data. An authentication code is also used to ensure authenticity of every packet.