On optimal batch rekeying for secure group communications in wireless networks

Advances in wireless communications and mobile computing have led to the emergence of group communications and applications over wireless. In many of these group interactions, new members can join and current members can leave at any time, and existing members must communicate securely to achieve application-specific missions or network-specific functionality. Since wireless networks are resource-constrained, a key challenge is to provide secure and efficient group communication mechanisms that satisfy application requirements while minimizing the communication cost. Instead of individual rekeying, i.e., performing a rekey operation right after each join or leave request, periodic batch rekeying has been proposed to alleviate rekeying overhead in resource-constrained wireless networks. In this paper, we propose an analytical model to address the issue of how often batch rekeying should be performed. We propose threshold-based batch rekeying schemes and demonstrate that an optimal rekey interval exists for each scheme. We further compare these schemes to identify the best scheme that can minimize the communication cost of rekeying while satisfying application requirements when given a set of parameter values characterizing the operational and environmental conditions of the system. In a highly dynamic wireless environment in which the system parameter values change at runtime, our work may be used to adapt the rekeying interval accordingly.     

Distributed collaborative key agreement and authentication protocols for dynamic peer Groups

We consider several distributed collaborative key agreement and authentication protocols for dynamic peer groups. There are several important characteristics which make this problem different from traditional secure group communication. They are: 1) distributed nature in which there is no centralized key server; 2) collaborative nature in which the group key is contributory (i.e., each group member will collaboratively contribute its part to the global group key); and 3) dynamic nature in which existing members may leave the group while new members may join. Instead of performing individual rekeying operations, i.e., recomputing the group key after every join or leave request, we discuss an interval-based approach of rekeying. We consider three interval-based distributed rekeying algorithms, or interval-based algorithms for short, for updating the group key: 1) the Rebuild algorithm; 2) the Batch algorithm; and 3) the Queue-batch algorithm. Performance of these three interval-based algorithms under different settings, such as different join and leave probabilities,is analyzed. We show that the interval-based algorithms significantly outperform the individual rekeying approach and that the Queue-batch algorithm performs the best among the three interval-based algorithms. More importantly, the Queue-batch algorithm can substantially reduce the computation and communication workload in a highly dynamic environment. We further enhance the interval-based algorithms in two aspects: authentication and implementation. Authentication focuses on the security improvement, while implementation realizes the interval-based algorithms in real network settings. Our work provides a fundamental understanding about establishing a group key via a distributed and collaborative approach for a dynamic peer group.     

A key management scheme for secure group communication using binomial key trees

Numerous emerging applications, such as teleconferencing, board meetings, pay-per-view and scientific discussions, rely on a secure group communication model. Scalable group rekeying is an important issue in the secure group communication model as the nature of the group is dynamic. The number of encryptions performed and rekey messages constructed should be minimized to carry out updating of the group key, and secure delivery of the group key should be carried out in an efficient manner. In this paper, we propose a new scheme to manage the secure group using the binomial key tree approach. In this scheme, the number of encryptions performed and rekey messages constructed during membership change are fewer compared to the scheme proposed by Wong and others. Further, it is not required to balance the tree after each membership change. We show that, for a large group, the average encryption cost and rekey message cost are independent of the size of the group for join operation and logarithmic in size of the group for leave operation. Hence our scheme is scalable. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Denial-of-service attack resilience dynamic group key agreement for heterogeneous networks

Heterogeneous networks, which can be either integrated wired and wireless networks or fully wireless networks, are convenient as they allow user nodes to be connected whenever and wherever they desire. Group key agreement (GKA) protocols are used to allow nodes in these networks to communicate securely with each other. Dynamic GKA protocols such as Join and Leave Protocol are also important since users can join and leave the network at anytime and the group key has to be changed to provide backward and forward secrecy. Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks on GKA protocols can disrupt GKA services for secure group communications but most GKA protocols in current literature do not consider protection against DoS attacks. Furthermore, most current GKA protocols only consider outsider attacks and do not consider insider attacks. In this paper, we present three authenticated, energy-efficient and scalable GKA protocols, namely Initial GKA, Join and Leave Protocol, that provide protection against insider and DoS attacks and key confirmation properties. We also present a detection protocol to detect malicious group insiders and continue establishing a group key after blocking these malicious insiders. Unlike current communication energy analysis that uses a single energy per bit value, our communication energy analysis separates point-to-point (P2P) and broadcast communications to provide more detailed study on communications in GKA. Both the complexity and energy analysis show that the three proposed protocols are efficient, scalable and suitable for heterogeneous networks.     

Self-healing group-wise key distribution schemes with time-limited node revocation for wireless sensor networks

In this article two novel group-wise key distribution schemes with time-limited node revocation are introduced for secure group communications in wireless sensor networks. The proposed key distribution schemes are based on two different hash chain structures, dual directional hash chain and hash binary tree. Their salient security properties include self-healing rekeying message distribution, which features a periodic one-way rekeying function with efficient tolerance for lost rekeying messages; and time-limited dynamic node attachment and detachment. Security evaluation shows that the proposed key distribution schemes generally satisfy the requirement of group communications in WSNs with lightweight communication and computation overhead, and are robust under poor communication channel quality.     

基于LKH混合树模型的新型组播密钥更新方案

安全组播是组播技术走向实用化必须解决的问题。在组成员动态变化时,设计一个高效的密钥管理方案是安全组播研究的主要问题。提出了一种基于新型混合树模型的组播密钥更新方案。该方案将GC的存储开销减小为4,同时,在成员加入或离开组时,由密钥更新引起的通信开销与nm保持对数关系(n为组成员数,m为每一族包含的成员数)。     

一种基于时间结构树的多播密钥管理方案

随着Internet的发展,多播通信技术得到了广泛的应用.其中组密钥管理是多播安全的核心问题.文中在分析已有研究的基础上,提出了一种基于时间结构树的密钥管理方案,采用周期性的密钥更新机制,通过安全滤波器分配新的组密钥,大大减少了密钥更新时的传输消息,提高了密钥更新的效率,实现密钥更新的可靠性.     

适用于传感器网络的分级群组密钥管理

 由于无线传感器网络中经常出现节点加入或离开网络的情况,所以需要建立一种安全高效的群组密钥管理系统来保证无线传感器网络中群组通信的安全性.提出了一种基于密钥树和中国剩余定理的分级群组密钥管理方案.有sensor节点加入,先向新成员发送二级群组密钥,可参与一些不太敏感的数据的传送;待新成员获得GCKS的信任之后,则向其发送群组密钥,从而可参与有关机密信息的会话.节点离开时,通过利用完全子集方法将剩余成员进行分割,提出的方案可以利用中国剩余定理对群组密钥进行安全的更新.证明方案满足正确性、群组密钥保密性、前向保密性和后向保密性等安全性质.性能分析表明,此方案适合应用于无线传感器网络环境.     

安全组播密钥批更新算法研究

密钥更新效率是影响组播安全性能的重要因素,将密钥组织成密钥逻辑树,对密钥树进行周期性批更新是提高密钥分发效率、降低密钥管理系统和用户负担的有效途径.本文提出一种密钥批更新算法,利用该算法可以进一步降低密钥更新对密钥管理系统和用户的负担;并利用该算法分析了密钥批更新的性能.     

Dynamic participation in a secure conference scheme for mobilecommunications

We propose a scheme to implement secure digital mobile communications. The scheme can both enable multiple users to hold a secure teleconference and also resolve the problem of allowing a participant to join dynamically or to quit a teleconference already in progress. Essentially, teleconference is a synchronous collaboration session in which participants at remote locations cooperate through wireless communications. Two requirements for the system are: privacy and authentication. Privacy signifies that an eavesdropper cannot intercept conversations of a conference. Authentication ensures that the service is not obtained fraudulently in order to avoid usage charge usage. We present a conference key distribution scheme for digital mobile communications, according to which users can share a common secret key to hold a secure teleconference over a public channel. The participants need not alter their secret information when a participant joins late or quits the conference early     

Efficient state updates for key management

Encryption is widely used to enforce usage rules for digital content. In many scenarios content is encrypted using a group key which is known to a group of users that are allowed to use the content. When users leave or join the group, the group key must be changed. The logical key hierarchy (LKH) algorithm is a very common method of managing these key changes. In this algorithm every user keeps a personal key composed of log n keys (for a group of n users). A key update message consists of O(log n) keys. A major drawback of the LKH algorithm is that users must update their state whenever users join or leave the group. When such an event happens, a key update message is sent to all users. A user who is offline during t key updates, and who needs to learn the keys sent in these updates as well as update its personal key, should receive and process the t key update messages, of total length O(t log n) keys. In this paper, we show how to reduce this overhead to a message of O(log t) keys. We also note that one of the methods that are used in this work to reduce the size of the update message can be used in other scenarios as well. It enables one to generate n pseudorandom keys of length k bits each, such that any successive set of t keys can be represented by a string log(t)/spl middot/k bits, without disclosing any information about the other keys.     

An Identity-Based Group Key Agreement Proto col for Low-Power Mobile Devices

In wireless mobile networks, group mem-bers join and leave the group frequently, a dynamic group key agreement protocol is required to provide a group of users with a shared secret key to achieve cryptographic goal. Most of previous group key agreement protocols for wireless mobile networks are static and employ traditional PKI. This paper presents an ID-based dynamic authen-ticated group key agreement protocol for wireless mobile networks. In Setup and Join algorithms, the protocol re-quires two rounds and each low-power node transmits con-stant size of messages. Furthermore, in Leave algorithm, only one round is required and none of low-power nodes is required to transmit any message, which improves the e?-ciency of the entire protocol. The protocol’s AKE-security with forward secrecy is proved under Decisional bilinear in-verse Di?e-Hellman (DBIDH) assumption. It is addition-ally proved to be contributory.     

An Enhanced Hierarchical Key Management Scheme for MANETs

Security is one of the major issues in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs). Their natural characteristics make them vulnerable to numerous severe attacks. In this paper, we present an enhanced hierarchical key management scheme for secure group communications in MANETs. The proposed approach primarily aims at improving security and complexity, especially complexity in the level of ordinary members for joining or leaving processes to achieve the most possible dynamic characteristic of MANETs without neglecting network security. The proposal scheme is designed with the potential of developing an efficient model interested in keying applied on hierarchical structure to increase the security and make no need to apply rekeying of all group members in different sub-levels as made by hierarchical key management scheme (HKMS). Also, it reduces complexity of processing load, memory usage and improves resources. In the proposed model, each communication between two nodes have a unique key to make it more secure with encrypting messages by different keys for more than one time and support node flexibility. Experiments are carried out on the proposed scheme to show the effect of complexity on each node in different grades and results are compared with traditional HKMS.     

An efficient group key management protocol using code for key calculation: CKC

This paper presents a new group key management protocol, CKC (Code for Key Calculation) for secure IP multicast. In this protocol which is based on logical key hierarchy, only the group key needs to be sent to new member at join. Then, using the group key current members and the new member calculate the necessary keys by node codes and one-way hash function. A?node code is a random number assigned to each node to help users calculate necessary keys. Again, at leave server just sends the new group key to the remaining members. By this key, members calculate necessary keys using node codes and one-way hash function. The security of the keys is based on one-wayness of hash function. The results show that CKC reduces computational and communication overhead, and message size largely at join without increasing them at leave.     

A secure and efficient conference scheme for mobile communications

A growing application area in mobile communications is mobile teleconferencing, in which a group of mobile users collaborate in an interactive procedure, such as a board meeting, a task force, a scientific discussion, or even a virtual classroom. Wireless communications transmit conversations via radio, making them more susceptible to eavesdropping and unauthorized access than are conversations carried via wires. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure confidentiality and authenticity in mobile teleconferencing. When deploying secure services in mobile teleconferences, it has to be taken into account that the mobility of users is usually built on portable devices with limited computing capability. A secure conference scheme for mobile communications needs to be executed efficiently on portable devices. We propose a new secure and efficient conference scheme for mobile communications. Based on a modular square root technique, this scheme is secure against eavesdropping, impersonating, and tracking attacks and allows a participant to join or quit a mobile teleconference dynamically. In addition, the scheme is particularly efficient on the mobile user's portable device because the mobile user needs to perform only single modular multiplication plus encryptions and decryptions of a secret key cryptosystem.     

Scalable secure group communication over IP multicast

We introduce and analyze a scalable rekeying scheme for implementing secure group communications Internet protocol multicast. We show that our scheme incurs constant processing, message, and storage overhead for a rekey operation when a single member joins or leaves the group, and logarithmic overhead for bulk simultaneous changes to the group membership. These bounds hold even when group dynamics are not known a priori. Our rekeying algorithm requires a particular clustering of the members of the secure multicast group. We describe a protocol to achieve such clustering and show that it is feasible to efficiently cluster members over realistic Internet-like topologies. We evaluate the overhead of our own rekeying scheme and also of previously published schemes via simulation over an Internet topology map containing over 280 000 routers. Through analysis and detailed simulations, we show that this rekeying scheme performs better than previous schemes for a single change to group membership. Further, for bulk group changes, our algorithm outperforms all previously known schemes by several orders of magnitude in terms of actual bandwidth usage, processing costs, and storage requirements.     

Protocol design for scalable and reliable group rekeying

We present the design and specification of a protocol for scalable and reliable group rekeying together with performance evaluation results. The protocol is based upon the use of key trees for secure groups and periodic batch rekeying. At the beginning of each rekey interval, the key server sends a rekey message to all users consisting of encrypted new keys (encryptions, in short) carried in a sequence of packets. We present a scheme for identifying keys, encryptions, and users, and a key assignment algorithm that ensures that the encryptions needed by a user are in the same packet. Our protocol provides reliable delivery of new keys to all users eventually. It also attempts to deliver new keys to all users with a high probability by the end of the rekey interval. For each rekey message, the protocol runs in two steps: a multicast step followed by a unicast step. Proactive forward error correction (FEC) multicast is used to reduce delivery latency. Our experiments show that a small FEC block size can be used to reduce encoding time at the server without increasing server bandwidth overhead. Early transition to unicast, after at most two multicast rounds, further reduces the worst-case delivery latency as well as user bandwidth requirement. The key server adaptively adjusts the proactivity factor based upon past feedback information; our experiments show that the number of NACKs after a multicast round can be effectively controlled around a target number. Throughout the protocol design, we strive to minimize processing and bandwidth requirements for both the key server and users.     

A fault‐tolerant group key agreement protocol exploiting dynamic setting

A fault‐tolerant group key agreement is an essential infrastructure for Internet communication among all involved participants; it can establish a secure session key no matter how many malicious participants exit simultaneously in an effort to disrupt the key agreement process. Recently, Zhao et al. proposed an efficient fault‐tolerant group key agreement protocol named efficient group key agreement that can resist denial‐of‐service attacks, reply attacks, man‐in‐middle attacks, and common modulus attacks; it can also preserve forward secrecy with lower computational cost than previous protocols. We show that it is still vulnerable to active attacks by malicious participants and modify the corresponding security weakness adaptively. Furthermore, we propose an efficient fault‐tolerant group key agreement based on a binary tree structure and enhance it to a dynamic setting where participants can leave or join the group arbitrarily according to their preferences with instant session key refreshment. Additionally, our session key refreshment is based on secure key updating to protect forward/backward confidentiality and is resistant to active/passive attacks. The performance analysis shows that our proposed protocol has lower computational cost and little additional communication cost exploiting dynamic setting. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Topological Key Hierarchy for Energy-Efficient Group Key Management in Wireless Sensor Networks

A sensor network operating in open environments requires a network-wide group key for confidentiality of exchanged messages between sensor nodes. When a node behaves abnormally due to its malfunction or a compromise attack by adversaries, the central sink node should update the group key of other nodes. The major concern of this group key update procedure will be the multi-hop communication overheads of the rekeying messages due to the energy constraints of sensor nodes. Many researchers have tried to reduce the number of rekeying messages by using the logical key tree. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient group key management scheme called Topological Key Hierarchy (TKH). TKH generates a key tree by using the underlying sensor network topology with consideration of subtree-based key tree separation and wireless multicast advantage. Based on our detailed analysis and simulation study, we compare the total rekeying costs of our scheme with the previous logical key tree schemes and demonstrate its energy efficiency.     

Analysis of a secure conference scheme for mobile communication

Dynamic participation is a feature of the secure conference schemes that allows new conferees to join and the old conferees to leave. The conferees who have left should not be able to decrypt the secure conference communication anymore. A secure conference scheme with dynamic participation was proposed in M.S. Hwang and W.P. Yang (1995) and later it was modified with the self-encryption mechanism in K.F. Hwang and C.C. Chang (2003) for a better performance. In this paper we analyze both the original scheme and the modified version. We show that both of them are subject to the active and passive attacks presented in this paper. Our active attack works in the way that a colluding group of attackers can still obtain the conference key even after they all leave the conference. The passive attack does not need any attacker to ever participate the conference. The conference key can be compromised with a large probability as long as the number of conferees is large.