Multi-cast key distribution: scalable, dynamic and provably secure construction

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a two-round dynamic multi-cast key distribution (DMKD) protocol under the star topology with a central authentication server. Users can share a common session key without revealing any information of the session key to the server and can join/leave to/from the group at any time even after establishing the session key. Our protocol is scalable because communication and computation costs of each user are independent from the number of users. Also, our protocol is still secure if either private key or session-specific randomness of a user is exposed. Furthermore, time-based backward secrecy is guaranteed by renewing the session key for every time period even if the session key is exposed. We introduce the first formal security definition for DMKD under the star topology in order to capture such strong exposure resilience and time-based backward secrecy. We prove that our protocol is secure in our security model in the standard model.