A Survey to Guide Group Key Protocol Development

A large number of papers have proposed cryptographic protocols for establishing secure group communication. These protocols allow group members to exchange or establish keys to encrypt and authenticate messages within the group. At the same time, individuals outside of the group cannot eavesdrop on group communication or inject messages. However, group protocols are rarely used in the real world. In this work, we conducted a survey to help uncover why the general population ignores such mechanisms for group communication. We also tried to determine what protocols would best match subjects’ current expectations for group protocols and methods for establishing trust. The survey indicated that a group protocol that leverages PKI or Web-of-Trust authenticated public keys and allows addition and deletion of members fulfills the majority of users’ expectations.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ACSAC
• Authors: Ahren Studer, Christina Johns, Jaanus Kase, Kyle O'Meara, Lorrie Faith Cranor
• Keywords: ACSAC 2008, Group, Group Communication, Group Protocol, Security Privacy