GKMPAN: An Efficient Group Rekeying Scheme for Secure Multicast in Ad-Hoc Networks

We present GKMPAN, an efficient and scalable group rekeying protocol for secure multicast in ad hoc networks. Our protocol exploits the property of ad hoc networks that each member of a group is both a host and a router, and distributes the group key to member nodes via a secure hop-by-hop propagation scheme. A probabilistic scheme based on pre-deployed symmetric keys is used for implementing secure channels between members for group key distribution. GKMPAN also includes a novel distributed scheme for efficiently updating the pre-deployed keys. GKMPAN has three attractive properties. First, it is significantly more efficient than group rekeying schemes that were adapted from those proposed for wired networks. Second, GKMPAN has the property of partial statelessness; that is, a node can decode the current group key even if it has missed a certain number of previous group rekeying operations. This makes it very attractive for ad hoc networks where nodes may lose packets due to transmis...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: JCS
• Authors: Sencun Zhu, Sanjeev Setia, Shouhuai Xu, Sushil Jajodia
• Keywords: Ad Hoc Network, Group, Group Key, JCS 2006