On a Construction of Short Digests for Authenticating Ad Hoc Networks

In pervasive ad-hoc networks, there is a need for devices to be able to communicate securely, despite the lack of apriori shared security associations and the absence of an infrastructure such as a PKI. Previous work has shown that through the use of short verification strings exchanged over manual authentication channels, devices can establish secret session keys. We examine a construction of such a cryptographic digest function for deriving the verification string, and propose an improved construction, with weaker assumptions. We further provide a concrete instantiation which is efficient, based on finite fields.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: ICCSA
• Authors: Khoongming Khoo, Ford-Long Wong, Chu-Wee Lim
• Keywords: Applied Computing, Apriori Shared Security, ICCSA 2009, Pervasive Ad-hoc Networks, Verification String