Key Management Framework Research Articles

Dynamic and secure key management model for hierarchical heterogeneous sensor networks

Many applications that utilise wireless sensor networks (WSNs) require essentially secure communication. However, WSNs suffer from some inherent weaknesses because of restricted communication and hardware capabilities. Key management is the crucial important building block for all security goals in WSNs. Most existing researches tried to assign keys assuming homogeneous network architecture. Recently, a few key management models for heterogeneous WSNs have been proposed. In this study, the authors propose a dynamic key management framework based on elliptical curve cryptography and signcryption method for heterogeneous WSNs. The proposed scheme has network scalability and sensor node (SN) mobility especially in liquid environments. Moreover, both periodic authentication and a new registration mechanism are proposed through prevention of SN compromise. The authors analyse some of the more seminal hierarchical heterogeneous WSN key management schemes and compare them with the proposed scheme. On comparing the proposed scheme with the more seminal hierarchical heterogeneous WSN key management schemes, the proposed framework individually proves to be better in terms of communication, computation and key storage.

Analysis Model of Key Management Protocols and Performance Evaluation for Heterogeneous Sensor Networks

传统的以单次或几组通信过程为目标进行的密钥管理性能分析的方法具有片面性,且随着网络异构程度的增加将越发复杂,分析结果的参考价值也相对较低.针对该问题,首先概括了异构传感网密钥管理框架,细化了其策略层逻辑结构,并结合 Petri 网理论,通过对库所进行能耗扩展,提出分簇结构下的密钥管理逻辑(key management logic,简称 KML)模型.随后,以带吸收壁的 Top 层密钥管理策略和 Button 层能耗模型为核心,建立了密钥管理协议的KML 模型,该模型支持多种异构性以 token 的形式参与分析和决策.最后,以低能耗协议为例,讨论了所提模型的能耗、时延和寿命的分析方法.实验结果表明,KML 模型能够有效地对协议进行仿真和分析,提供了对协议的短期性能和长期性能的合理估测,从而帮助设计者发现协议瓶颈和性能隐患,为协议改进提供参考.;The traditional ways of estimating key management schemes, which only test one, or a fewcommunications, are not comprehensive. With the increase of heterogeneous strength, static analysis will becomemore and more complex, and finally lose its referential value. First, a key management framework in this paper issummarized. According to the strategy layer of this framework and based on the classical cluster model of the entitylayer, a key management logic (KML) model is proposed. This KML model involving colored hierarchical Petri netand generalized stochastic Petri net extended the energy place. Next, by making the Top layer key managementstrategy and Button layer energy comsuption model as the core, a KML model for key management is built tosupport and represent heterogeneity with tokens to help the analysis and decisions. Finally, the performance analysismethods are discussed, including energy consumption, latency and lifetime. The experimental results show thatKML model is effective for analyzing the short-term and long-term performance and can help scheme designers toimprove their schemes by discovering the bottlenecks and hidden perils.

A key management framework for AMI networks in smart grid

The environments in which current electric grids operate as well as the requirements for the emerging smart grid differ substantially from those of today's Internet and telecommunication networks. For example, typical electric or gas meters in the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) are low-power, low-capability wireless devices utilizing personal area wireless network technology (e.g., IEEE 802.15.4). These devices are low-cost, typically with 4-12 kbytes of RAM and 64-256 kbytes of flash memory, and are often connected to the backhaul via low-bandwidth links. Comparing this to the high-powered, high-capability devices of the Internet with gigabytes of RAM and storage, the differences are striking. Security solutions designed for capability-rich Internet devices will not be suitable for the capability-poor devices of the smart grid; thus, new requirements are needed that can efficiently operate in resource constrained devices. With this operating environment in mind, we present a smart grid key management framework with application to AMI networks. Specifically, we describe how this key management model can be realized in such a resource-constrained environment using existing standard protocols and provide preliminary performance results.

A Distributed Key Management Framework with Cooperative Message Authentication in VANETs

In this paper, we propose a distributed key management framework based on group signature to provision privacy in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Distributed key management is expected to facilitate the revocation of malicious vehicles, maintenance of the system, and heterogeneous security policies, compared with the centralized key management assumed by the existing group signature schemes. In our framework, each road side unit (RSU) acts as the key distributor for the group, where a new issue incurred is that the semi-trust RSUs may be compromised. Thus, we develop security protocols for the scheme which are able to detect compromised RSUs and their colluding malicious vehicles. Moreover, we address the issue of large computation overhead due to the group signature implementation. A practical cooperative message authentication protocol is thus proposed to alleviate the verification burden, where each vehicle just needs to verify a small amount of messages. Details of possible attacks and the corresponding solutions are discussed. We further develop a medium access control (MAC) layer analytical model and carry out NS2 simulations to examine the key distribution delay and missed detection ratio of malicious messages, with the proposed key management framework being implemented over 802.11 based VANETs.

Implementing Data Security in Wireless Sensor Networks through Location Aware Multifunctional Key Management Framework

As wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consists of large number of nodes which are deployed in unattended/hostile environments and are exposed to different types of attacks due to compromisation of node or group of nodes. Usually, security designs provide a hop-by-hop security paradigm and are vulnerable to many types of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, such as report disruption and selective forwarding, puts data availability at stake. In this paper, we overcome these vulnerabilities for large-scale static WSNs by using Location aware multifunctional key management framework. Sensors will be deployed in some area in a grid type model and knows its position based on X and Y coordinates in the grid. Further, embed the location information of each sensor into few of its secret keys which are owned by that sensor node and location-aware property effectively limits the impact of compromised nodes only to their vicinity without affecting end-to-end data security. This framework assures both node-to-sink and node-to-node authentication along the report forwarding routes and demonstrates that this design is highly resilient against an increasing number of compromised nodes and effective in energy savings by avoiding DoS attacks.

An Effective Time Management Schema in WSNs

WSN usually consists of a large number of resource constraint sensor nodes that are generally deployed in unattended/hostile environments and Existing security designs mostly provide a hop-by-hop security paradigm. Furthermore, existing security designs are also vulnerable to many types of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, such as random node capture attack, report disruption attacks and selective forwarding attacks. We come up with a new concept that provide end-to end security framework in which secret keys are generated and each node stores a few keys based on Time Schema . The proposed multifunctional key management framework assures both node-to-sink and node-to-node authentication along the report forwarding routes.

Toward Key Management for Communications of Wide Area Primary and Backup Protection

<para xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> The wide-area primary and backup protection system needs available communication networks to trip relays via remote control, which is vulnerable to cybersecurity threats. This letter proposes a key graph-based key-management framework to secure the communications of wide-area primary and backup protection. Besides, the rekeying strategies are designed to deal with the redirection of communication associations due to the variation of protection zones. </para>

ECGK: An efficient clustering scheme for group key management in MANETs

Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (or MANETs) are flexible networks that are expected to support emerging group applications such as spontaneous collaborative activities and rescue operations. In order to provide secrecy to these applications, a common encryption key has to be established between group members of the application. This task is critical in MANETs because these networks have no fixed infrastructure, frequent node and link failures and a dynamic topology. The proposed approaches to cope with these characteristics aim to avoid centralized solutions and organize the network into clusters. However, the clustering criteria used in the literature are not always adequate for key management and security. In, this paper, we propose, a group key management framework based on a trust oriented clustering scheme. We show that trust is a relevant clustering criterion for group key management in MANETs. Trust information enforce authentication and is disseminated by the mobility of nodes. Furthermore, it helps to evict malicious nodes from the multicast session even if they are authorized members of the group. Simulation results show that our solution is efficient and typically adapted to mobility of nodes.

An Adaptive Key Management Framework for the Wireless Mesh and Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and wireless mesh networks (WMNs) are popular research subjects. The interconnection of both network types enables next-generation applications and creates new optimization opportunities. Currently, plenty of protocols are available on the security of either wireless sensor networks or wireless mesh networks, an investigation in peer work underpins the fact that neither of these protocols is adapt to the interconnection of these network types. The internal cause relies on the fact that they differ in terms of complexity, scalability and network abstraction level. Therefore, in this article, we propose a unified security framework with three key management protocols, MPKM, MGKM, and TKM which are able to provide basic functionalities on the simplest devices and advanced functionalities on high performance nodes. We perform a detailed performance evaluation on our protocols against some important metrics such as scalability, key connectivity and compromise resilience, and we also compare our solution to the current keying protocols for WSNs and WMNs.

Secure and Efficient Multicast in Wireless Sensor Networks Allowing Ad hoc Group Formation

Multicast security is one of the most important security services in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) since it enables a sink to multicast messages to sensors in a secure manner. While multicast authentication has widely been addressed in the literature, the problem of multicast encryption still remains open in WSNs. In this paper, we propose a multicast encryption scheme called global-partition, local-diffusion (GPLD) that focuses on scheme efficiency and supports various multicast group semantics. GPLD partitions sensors into a series of elementary groups using their location and class information and accordingly builds a location-class-aware symmetric key management framework. Furthermore, the scheme leverages the fact that sensors are both end receivers and routers, which effectively minimizes global (sink-to-sensor) group key distribution and rekeying traffic while supporting various multicast group semantics. The efficiency and security properties of GPLD are justified through both analysis and simulations.

ASPE: attribute-based secure policy enforcement in vehicular ad hoc networks

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are usually operated among vehicles moving at high speeds, and thus their communication relations can be changed frequently. In such a highly dynamic environment, establishing trust among vehicles is difficult. To solve this problem, we propose a flexible, secure and decentralized attribute based secure key management framework for VANETs. Our solution is based on attribute based encryption (ABE) to construct an attribute based security policy enforcement (ASPE) framework. ASPE considers various road situations as attributes. These attributes are used as encryption keys to secure the transmitted data. ASPE is flexible in that it can dynamically change encryption keys depending on the VANET situations. At the same time, ASPE naturally incorporates data access control policies on the transmitted data. ASPE provides an integrated solution to involve data access control, key management, security policy enforcement, and secure group formation in highly dynamic vehicular communication environments. Our performance evaluations show that ASPE is efficient and it can handle large amount of data encryption/decryption flows in VANETs.

LEDS: Providing Location-Aware End-to-End Data Security in Wireless Sensor Networks

Providing desirable data security, that is, confidentiality, authenticity, and availability, in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is challenging, as a WSN usually consists of a large number of resource constraint sensor nodes that are generally deployed in unattended/hostile environments and, hence, are exposed to many types of severe insider attacks due to node compromise. Existing security designs mostly provide a hop-by-hop security paradigm and thus are vulnerable to such attacks. Furthermore, existing security designs are also vulnerable to many types of denial of service (DoS) attacks, such as report disruption attacks and selective forwarding attacks and thus put data availability at stake. In this paper, we seek to overcome these vulnerabilities for large-scale static WSNs. We come up with a location-aware end-to-end security framework in which secret keys are bound to geographic locations and each node stores a few keys based on its own location. This location-aware property effectively limits the impact of compromised nodes only to their vicinity without affecting end-to-end data security. The proposed multifunctional key management framework assures both node-to-sink and node-to-node authentication along the report forwarding routes. Moreover, the proposed data delivery approach guarantees efficient en-route bogus data filtering and is highly robust against DoS attacks. The evaluation demonstrates that the proposed design is highly resilient against an increasing number of compromised nodes and effective in energy savings.

Alternative wireless client authentication and key distribution

Access control and key distribution mechanisms have been major concerns with WLAN set-up. The original 802.11 standard defines authentication and encryption mechanisms but unfortunately suffers from serious design flaws and doesn't provide a key management framework. Consequently, a set of standards has been developed with the aim of improving upon the security of WLAN, requiring the cooperation between a remote authentication server and a security and key exchange protocol. Multiple security protocols have been consequently adopted and proposed for WLAN security.

Dynamic combinatorial key management scheme for sensor networks

AbstractSecuring sensor networks has received much attention in the last few years. In a typical field deployment, a sensor network self‐organizes, closely interacts with its physical environment, and works unattended possibly in a hostile environment such as a battlefield. In such environments, sensor networks are subject to node capture as well as a myriad of other attacks. Constrained energy, memory, and computational capabilities of sensor nodes mandate a clever design of security solutions to minimize overhead while maintaining secure communications over the lifespan of the network. In this paper, we propose a Dynamic Combinatorial Key management scheme, DCK, to provide efficient, scalable, and survivable dynamic keying in a clustered sensor network with a large number of sensor nodes. DCK employs the Exclusion‐Basis Systems (EBS) as the underlying framework for key management at both the cluster and the sensor node levels. DCK enhances network security by localizing cluster key management functions, thus, limiting the impact of sensor node capture to the attacked cluster. Within a cluster, DCK decouples key generation, assignment, and distribution, and distributes the key management tasks among cluster nodes. Simulation results show that DCK is efficient in terms of energy consumption and storage. Also, it significantly outperforms other dynamic keying schemes, in particular with regards to energy consumed in key refreshment and re‐keying after node capture. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

JET: Dynamic Join-Exit-Tree Amortization and Scheduling for Contributory Key Management

In secure group communications, the time cost associated with key updates in the events of member join and departure is an important aspect of quality of service, especially in large groups with highly dynamic membership. To achieve better time efficiency, we propose a join-exit-tree (JET) key management framework. First, a special key tree topology with join and exit subtrees is introduced to handle key updates for dynamic membership. Then, optimization techniques are employed to determine the capacities of join and exit subtrees for achieving the best time efficiency, and algorithms are designed to dynamically update the join and exit trees. We show that, on average, the asymptotic time cost for each member join/departure event is reduced to O(log (log n)) from the previous cost of O(log n), where n is the group size. Our experimental results based on simulated user activities as well as the real MBone data demonstrate that the proposed JET scheme can significantly improve the time efficiency, while maintaining low communication and computation cost, of tree-based contributory key management.

Key Management for Secure Multicast over IPv6 Wireless Networks

Multicasting is an efficient method for transmission and routing of packets to multiple destinations using fewer network resources. Along with widespread deployment of wireless networks, secure multicast over wireless networks is an important and challenging goal. In this paper, we extend the scope of a recent new key distribution scheme to a security framework that offers a novel solution for secure multicast over IPv6 wireless networks. Our key management framework includes two scenarios for securely distributing the group key and rekey messages for joining and leaving a mobile host in secure multicast group. In addition, we perform the security analysis and provide performance comparisons between our approach and two recently published scenarios. The benefits of our proposed techniques are that they minimize the number of transmissions required to rekey the multicast group and impose minimal storage requirements on the multicast group. In addition, our proposed schemes are also very desirable from the viewpoint of transmission bandwidth savings since an efficient rekeying mechanism is provided for membership changes and they significantly reduce the required bandwidth due to key updating in mobile networks. Moreover, they achieve the security and scalability requirements in wireless networks.

Secure and efficient key management in mobile ad hoc networks

In mobile ad hoc networks, due to unreliable wireless media, host mobility and lack of infrastructure, providing secure communications is a big challenge. Usually, cryptographic techniques are used for secure communications in wired and wireless networks. Symmetric and asymmetric cryptography have their advantages and disadvantages. In fact, any cryptographic means is ineffective if its key management is weak. Key management is also a central aspect for security in mobile ad hoc networks. In mobile ad hoc networks, the computational load and complexity for key management are strongly subject to restriction by the node's available resources and the dynamic nature of network topology. We propose a secure and efficient key management (SEKM) framework for mobile ad hoc networks. SEKM builds a public key infrastructure (PKI) by applying a secret sharing scheme and using an underlying multi-cast server groups. We give detailed information on the formation and maintenance of the server groups. In SEKM, each server group creates a view of the certificate authority (CA) and provides certificate update service for all nodes, including the servers themselves. A ticket scheme is introduced for efficient certificate service. In addition, an efficient server group updating scheme is proposed. The performance of SEKM is evaluated through simulation.

Complex threshold key management for ad hoc network

A complex threshold key management framework has been proposed, which can address the challenges posed by the unique nature of Ad hoc network. Depending on the cooperation of the controller and participation nodes, this scheme should be efficient in the operation environmental alteration and tolerant faults of node, which take the advantages of the benefits of both key management approaches and alleviate their limitations. For the cooperation of the controller and participation nodes, a (t, n) threshold Elliptic curve sign-encryption scheme with the specified receiver also has been proposed. Using this threshold signencryption scheme, the key management distributes the trust between a controller and a set of participation nodes.

Improvement on the flexible tree-based key management framework

Matsuzaki et al. had proposed a flexible tree-based key management framework for a terminal to connect with multiple content distribution systems (CDSs) using a public bulletin board. In their scheme, the key management center constructs the public bulletin board by utilizing symmetric cryptosystem to protect terminal node keys. On the other hand, the terminals can obtain its node keys by decrypting the cipher which is posted on the public bulletin board of CDS. However, this method is not efficient for a large group which has a number of terminals. When a terminal changes its membership, the key managerial center needs a large amount of computation to structure the public bulletin, and the terminal cannot efficiently compute its node keys from the large pubic bulletin board. In this paper, we propose an improved scheme to structure a public bulletin board efficiently by the key management center of CDS. The improved scheme is capable of a large group of terminals and ensures that low powered equipment can efficiently obtain their node key.

Combinatorial Optimization of Group Key Management

Given the growing number of group applications in many existing and evolving domains recent attention has been focused on secure multicasting over the Internet. When such systems are required to manage large groups that undergo frequent fluctuations in group membership, the need for efficient encryption key management becomes critical. This paper presents a new key management framework based on a combinatorial formulation of the group multicast key management problem that is applicable to the general problem of managing keys for any type of trusted group communication, regardless of the underlying transmission method between group participants. Specifically, we describe Exclusion Basis Systems and show exactly when they exist. In addition, the framework separates key management from encrypted message transmission, resulting in a more efficient implementation of key management.