An interval based contributory key agreement

Abstract

Many emerging network applications are based upon a group communication model. In a peer-to-peer or ad-hoc network which do not have a previously agreed upon common secret key, communication is susceptible to eavesdropping, Hence a secure distributed group key agreement is required to establish and authenticate a common group key for secure and private communication. This paper presents an authenticated distributed collaborative key agreement for dynamic peer groups. The protocol is distributed in nature in which there is no centralized key server, collaborative in nature in which the group key is contributory, dynamic in nature in which existing members may leave the group while new members may join. Instead of performing individual rekeying an interval-based approach is used. The Queue-batch algorithm used for rekeying substantially reduces the computation and communication cost. Key authentication provided focuses on security improvement.