Security Analysis of a Distributed Common Secret Generation Procedure

In [1, 2], a distributed scheme allowing any number of members to compute a common secret without revealing individual secret was proposed. We present a security weakness of this protocol. In doing so, we show that any two members can collude and obtain the secret contributed by middle member in generating the common secret.

[1]  Dilip D. Kandlur,et al.  Key management for secure lnternet multicast using Boolean function minimization techniques , 1999, IEEE INFOCOM '99. Conference on Computer Communications. Proceedings. Eighteenth Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies. The Future is Now (Cat. No.99CH36320).

[2]  Bernhard Plattner,et al.  Efficient security for large and dynamic multicast groups , 1998, Proceedings Seventh IEEE International Workshop on Enabling Technologies: Infrastucture for Collaborative Enterprises (WET ICE '98) (Cat. No.98TB100253).

[3]  Neal Koblitz,et al.  Algebraic aspects of cryptography , 1998, Algorithms and computation in mathematics.

[4]  Adi Shamir,et al.  How to share a secret , 1979, CACM.