Key Management Schemes for Multilayer and Multiple Simultaneous Secure Group Communication

R Aparna,B B Amberker

doi:10.5402/2012/383218

Abstract

Many emerging applications are based on group communication model and many group communications like multimedia distribution and military applications require a security infrastructure that provides multiple levels of access control for group members. The group members are divided into a number of subgroups and placed at different privilege levels based on certain criteria. A member at higher level must be capable of accessing communication in its own level as well as its descendant lower levels but not vice versa. In this paper we propose a key management scheme for this multilayer group communication. We achieve substantial reduction in storage and encryption cost compared to the scheme proposed by Dexter et al. We also address periodic group rekeying. Applications like scientific discussion and project management may lead to a scenario in which it is necessary to set up multiple secure groups simultaneously, and few members may be part of several secure groups. Managing group keys for simultaneous secure groups is critical. In this paper we propose a novel key management scheme for multiple simultaneous groups.

Highlights

Many emerging applications like secure audio and visual broadcasts, pay-per-view, scientific discussion, and teleconferencing are based on group communication model
A common key known as group key or secret key must be established with all the users in the group, so that any group member can encrypt the message using this key, and all others can decrypt the message using the same key
Every time when a new member joins the group, the group key must be changed in order to provide backward access control

Summary

Introduction

Many emerging applications like secure audio and visual broadcasts, pay-per-view, scientific discussion, and teleconferencing are based on group communication model. For every membership change (join/leave), to perform rekey operation, KDC multicasts an activating share to enable the members to compute new group key. We address the above two cases of Secure Group Communication (SGC) and propose key management schemes. There are two layers, group with HDTV receiver forms higher layer subgroup and the one with traditional television receiver forms lower layer subgroup This application requires a multilayer SGC scenario. Whenever there is a membership change in any layer, KDC just sends a different activating share to the members of that layer so that they can compute a new group key for that layer. Each user ui is required to store prepositioned shares of the nodes from leaf to the root

Proposed Key Management Scheme for Multilayer SGC

Comparison

Multiple Simultaneous SGC

Authenticated Secure Group Communication

Findings

Conclusion