SOMA: Self-Organised Mesh Authentication

Community mesh networks have emerged rapidly in every metropolis around the world, however many of the security methods applied are counter-intuitive and usually disrupt the autonomous characteristics of the mesh nodes. In SOMA we present a structured Peer-to-Peer solution providing authentication service based on a scalable, self-organized and fully distributed Web-of-Trust. Our proposal is a hybrid Public Key Infrastructure build on top of Chord, allowing each agent to place its own trust; policy while keeping the autonomous characteristics the nodes intact. Our goal is to create a large-scale authentication system for mesh networks without the need of a Trusted Third Party. We leave the decision of whom to trust in each agent independently taking advantage of the overlay to alleviate the shortcomings of traditional Web-of-Trust models. This is achieved by using the overlay as a meta-structure to infer trust relationships. The possible attacks and limitations of our proposal are also investigated and discussed.