A tree-based scheme for security of many-to-many communications

Issue title: Broadband Multimedia Sensor Networks in Healthcare Applications

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Lin, Ren-Hung | Jan, Jinn-Ke

Affiliations: Institute of Applied Mathematics, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung 402, Taiwan, ROC | Institute of Computer Science, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung 402, Taiwan, ROC Tel.: +886-(0)4-22858200, Fax: +886-(0)4-22853869, E-mail: [email protected] [email protected]

Abstract: In many-to-many group secure communications, group members may broadcast or receive messages during any session. A fast session key distribution scheme is desirable for handling highly changeable message flows among group members. In this paper, we propose a group keying scheme using tree structures for many-to-many group secure communications. The key storage and computational complexity of the proposed scheme are acceptable and practical for real-life applications. Moreover, once keys are distributed, group members will be able to freely communicate with any member in security with no need of a group controller.

Keywords: Key management, symmetric encryption, pseudo random function, many-to-many group communication

Journal: Journal of High Speed Networks, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 69-79, 2007