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Book ChapterDOI

An optimal class of symmetric key generation systems

Rolf Blom1
01 Dec 1985-Vol. 209, pp 335-338
TL;DR: In this article, a symmetric key generation system (SKGS) was proposed, in which the amount of secret information needed by each user to generate his keys is the least possible while at the same time a certain minimum number of users have to cooperate to resolve the uncertainty of unknown keys.
Abstract: It is sometimes required that user pairs in a network share secret information to be used for mutual identification or as a key in a cipher system. If the network is large it becomes impractical or even impossible to store all keys securely at the users. A natural solution then is to supply each user with a relatively small amount of secret data from which he can derive all his keys. A scheme for this purpose will be presented and we call such a scheme a symmetric key generation system (SKGS). However, as all keys will be generated from a small amount of data, dependencies between keys will exist. Therefore by cooperation, users in the system might be able to decrease their uncertainty about keys they should not have access to.The objective of this paper is to present a class of SKGS for which the amount of secret information needed by each user to generate his keys is the least possible while at the same time a certain minimum number of users have to cooperate to resolve the uncertainty of unknown keys.

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Citations
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Book ChapterDOI
01 Dec 2002
TL;DR: In this article, the authors presented hierarchical identity-based encryption schemes and signature schemes that have total collusion resistance on an arbitrary number of levels and that have chosen ciphertext security in the random oracle model assuming the difficulty of the Bilinear Diffie-Hellman problem.
Abstract: We present hierarchical identity-based encryption schemes and signature schemes that have total collusion resistance on an arbitrary number of levels and that have chosen ciphertext security in the random oracle model assuming the difficulty of the Bilinear Diffie-Hellman problem.

1,334 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
27 Oct 2003
TL;DR: This paper proposes a new key pre-distribution scheme, which substantially improves the resilience of the network compared to the existing schemes, and exhibits a nice threshold property: when the number of compromised nodes is less than the threshold, the probability that any nodes other than these compromised nodes are affected is close to zero.
Abstract: To achieve security in wireless sensor networks, it is important to be able to encrypt and authenticate messages sent among sensor nodes. Keys for encryption and authentication purposes must be agreed upon by communicating nodes. Due to resource constraints, achieving such key agreement in wireless sensor networks is non-trivial. Many key agreement schemes used in general networks, such as Diffie-Hellman and public-key based schemes, are not suitable for wireless sensor networks. Pre-distribution of secret keys for all pairs of nodes is not viable due to the large amount of memory used when the network size is large. To solve the key pre-distribution problem, two elegant key pre-distribution approaches have been proposed recently [11, 7].In this paper, we propose a new key pre-distribution scheme, which substantially improves the resilience of the network compared to the existing schemes. Our scheme exhibits a nice threshold property: when the number of compromised nodes is less than the threshold, the probability that any nodes other than these compromised nodes is affected is close to zero. This desirable property lowers the initial payoff of smaller scale network breaches to an adversary, and makes it necessary for the adversary to attack a significant proportion of the network. We also present an in depth analysis of our scheme in terms of network resilience and associated overhead.

1,200 citations

Book ChapterDOI
16 Aug 1992
TL;DR: This paper considers the model where interaction is allowed in the common key computation phase, and shows a gap between the models by exhibiting an interactive scheme in which the user's information is only k + t - 1 times the size of the commonKey.
Abstract: A key distribution scheme for dynamic conferences is a method by which initially an (off-line) trusted server distributes private individual pieces of information to a set of users. Later any group of users of a given size (a dynamic conference) is able to compute a common secure key. In this paper we study the theory and applications of such perfectly secure systems. In this setting, any group of t users can compute a common key by each user computing using only his private piece of information and the identities of the other t - 1 group users. Keys are secure against coalitions of up to k users, that is, even if k users pool together their pieces they cannot compute anything about a key of any t-size conference comprised of other users.First we consider a non-interactive model where users compute the common key without any interaction. We prove a lower hound on the size of the user's piece of information of (k+t-1 t-1) times the size of the common key. We then establish the optimality of this bound, by describing and analyzing a scheme which exactly meets this limitation (the construction extends the one in [2]). Then, we consider the model where interaction is allowed in the common key computation phase, and show a gap between the models by exhibiting an interactive scheme in which the user's information is only k + t - 1 times the size of the common key. We further show various applications and useful modifications of our basic scheme. Finally, we present its adaptation to network topologies with neighborhood constraints.

1,181 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A new key predistribution scheme is proposed which substantially improves the resilience of the network compared to previous schemes, and an in-depth analysis of the scheme in terms of network resilience and associated overhead is given.
Abstract: To achieve security in wireless sensor networks, it is important to be able to encrypt and authenticate messages sent between sensor nodes. Before doing so, keys for performing encryption and authentication must be agreed upon by the communicating parties. Due to resource constraints, however, achieving key agreement in wireless sensor networks is nontrivial. Many key agreement schemes used in general networks, such as Diffie-Hellman and other public-key based schemes, are not suitable for wireless sensor networks due to the limited computational abilities of the sensor nodes. Predistribution of secret keys for all pairs of nodes is not viable due to the large amount of memory this requires when the network size is large.In this paper, we provide a framework in which to study the security of key predistribution schemes, propose a new key predistribution scheme which substantially improves the resilience of the network compared to previous schemes, and give an in-depth analysis of our scheme in terms of network resilience and associated overhead. Our scheme exhibits a nice threshold property: when the number of compromised nodes is less than the threshold, the probability that communications between any additional nodes are compromised is close to zero. This desirable property lowers the initial payoff of smaller-scale network breaches to an adversary, and makes it necessary for the adversary to attack a large fraction of the network before it can achieve any significant gain.

1,123 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
27 Oct 2003
TL;DR: The Localized Encryption and Authentication Protocol (LEAP) as discussed by the authors is a key management protocol for sensor networks that is designed to support in-network processing, while at the same time restricting the security impact of a node compromise to the immediate network neighborhood of the compromised node.
Abstract: In this paper, we describe LEAP (Localized Encryption and Authentication Protocol), a key management protocol for sensor networks that is designed to support in-network processing, while at the same time restricting the security impact of a node compromise to the immediate network neighborhood of the compromised node. The design of the protocol is motivated by the observation that different types of messages exchanged between sensor nodes have different security requirements, and that a single keying mechanism is not suitable for meeting these different security requirements. LEAP supports the establishment of four types of keys for each sensor node -- an individual key shared with the base station, a pairwise key shared with another sensor node, a cluster key shared with multiple neighboring nodes, and a group key that is shared by all the nodes in the network. The protocol used for establishing and updating these keys is communication- and energy-efficient, and minimizes the involvement of the base station. LEAP also includes an efficient protocol for inter-node traffic authentication based on the use of one-way key chains. A salient feature of the authentication protocol is that it supports source authentication without precluding in-network processing and passive participation. We analyze the performance and the security of our scheme under various attack models and show our schemes are very efficient in defending against many attacks.

1,097 citations

References
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Book
01 Jan 1977
TL;DR: This book presents an introduction to BCH Codes and Finite Fields, and methods for Combining Codes, and discusses self-dual Codes and Invariant Theory, as well as nonlinear Codes, Hadamard Matrices, Designs and the Golay Code.
Abstract: Linear Codes. Nonlinear Codes, Hadamard Matrices, Designs and the Golay Code. An Introduction to BCH Codes and Finite Fields. Finite Fields. Dual Codes and Their Weight Distribution. Codes, Designs and Perfect Codes. Cyclic Codes. Cyclic Codes: Idempotents and Mattson-Solomon Polynomials. BCH Codes. Reed-Solomon and Justesen Codes. MDS Codes. Alternant, Goppa and Other Generalized BCH Codes. Reed-Muller Codes. First-Order Reed-Muller Codes. Second-Order Reed-Muller, Kerdock and Preparata Codes. Quadratic-Residue Codes. Bounds on the Size of a Code. Methods for Combining Codes. Self-dual Codes and Invariant Theory. The Golay Codes. Association Schemes. Appendix A. Tables of the Best Codes Known. Appendix B. Finite Geometries. Bibliography. Index.

10,083 citations