Wireless access networks are rapidly becoming a part of our everyday life. The widespread availability of miniature wireless devices such as PDAs, cellular phones, Pocket PCs, small fixtures on buildings, and sensors are one step towards making the vision of anywhere, anytime pervasive access and computing a reality. But we are still a long way off from the goal of seamless wireless operation where any wireless device would be able to connect to any other wireline/wireless device at any time, in any place, and while satisfying the requirements of the user of the device. An important area that has to be focused on to make this vision a reality is that related to ad-hoc networks.

Technology under development for wireless ad-hoc networks is making important steps toward this end goal possible. However, the security concerns remain a serious impediment to widespread adoption. The underlying radio communication medium for wireless network provides serious exposure to attacks against wireless networks. Wireless ad-hoc networks usually cannot depend on traditional infrastructure found in enterprise environments such as dependable power sources, high bandwidth, continuous connectivity, common network services, well-known membership, static configuration, system administration, and physical security. Finally, throw in malicious adversaries with Byzantine collusion threats and you have a very interesting and challenging problem. Without adequate security, enterprises will not be able to profit from the use of wireless ad-hoc networks, defense organizations might be unable to guarantee the safety of their personnel in battlefield scenarios, and wireless ad-hoc networks will remain on the drawing board even if the other problems associated with them are solved.

The aim of this issue is to bring together the work done by practitioners as well as researchers in understanding the practical and theoretical issues related to all aspects of security in ad-hoc networks. We seek original, previously unpublished and completed contributions not currently under review by another journal. Areas of interest include a variety of topics related to wireless ad-hoc networks including, but not limited to:

• Intrusion detection
• Self-monitoring/self-healing wireless networks
• Dependability/security optimization and adaptive control
• Role of biometrics
• Novel threats/attacks/vulnerability
• Public key infrastructure implementation
• Intrusion tolerant mechanisms
• Denial of service attacks and prevention
• Secure group communication/multicast
• Security considerations for resource constrained devices
• Cross-layer network attacks and mitigation
• Secure routing protocols
• Network controlled secure physical reconfiguration
• Redundancy and security
• Reasoning about trust in wireless environment
• Tools for analysis and verification of protocols
• Privacy, contract agreements, and payment systems

Authors should follow the IEEE J-SAC manuscript format described in the Information for Authors. There will be one round of reviews and acceptance will be limited to papers needing only moderate revisions. Proepective authors should submit a pdf version of their complete manuscript (which should be compressed if the file size exceeds 1 Mbyte) via emal to wireless_sec@research.telcordia.com according to the following timetable: