DKEM: Secure and efficient Distributed Key Establishment Protocol for Wireless Mesh Networks

In this paper, we propose an efficient and secure key establishment protocol that is tailored for Wireless Mesh Networks. The protocol is based on identity-based key establishment, but without the utilization of a trusted authority for private key generation. Instead, this task is performed by the collaboration of mesh nodes; a number of users exceeding a certain threshold form a coalition to generate private keys for the network users. We performed simulative performance evaluation in order to show the effect of both the threshold value and the network size, i.e., total number of nodes, on the latency of key establishment and on the success percentage of user private key generation. Results reveal a trade-off between resiliency and efficiency; increasing the threshold value also increases the resiliency of the network, but negatively effects its latency and success percentage. For the threshold values that are smaller than 10 and for a minimum of 40 mesh nodes, at least 93% of the user private keys can be computed within at most 2 min. We also discuss the security of our protocol. We show that our protocol is secure against both outsider malicious and insider semi-honest adversaries.

[1]  Peng Gong,et al.  A New User Authentication Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks Using Elliptic Curves Cryptography , 2013, Int. J. Distributed Sens. Networks.

[2]  Ingrid Verbauwhede,et al.  Ultra low-power implementation of ECC on the ARM Cortex-M0+ , 2014, 2014 51st ACM/EDAC/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC).

[3]  Marc Girault,et al.  Self-Certified Public Keys , 1991, EUROCRYPT.

[4]  Srdjan Capkun,et al.  Jamming-resistant Key Establishment using Uncoordinated Frequency Hopping , 2008, 2008 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (sp 2008).

[5]  Ian F. Akyildiz,et al.  Wireless mesh networks: a survey , 2005, Comput. Networks.

[6]  Kakali Chatterjee,et al.  Mutual Authentication Protocol Using Hyperelliptic Curve Cryptosystem in Constrained Devices , 2013, Int. J. Netw. Secur..

[7]  Hideki Imai,et al.  ON SEEKING SMART PUBLIC-KEY-DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS. , 1986 .

[8]  Sajal K. Das,et al.  Security Issues in Wireless Mesh Networks , 2008 .

[9]  Dennis Eichmann,et al.  The History Of Mathematics An Introduction , 2016 .

[10]  Dharma P. Agrawal,et al.  Threshold and identity-based key management and authentication for wireless ad hoc networks , 2004, International Conference on Information Technology: Coding and Computing, 2004. Proceedings. ITCC 2004..

[11]  Adi Shamir,et al.  A method for obtaining digital signatures and public-key cryptosystems , 1978, CACM.

[12]  Bo Sheng,et al.  TelosB Implementation of Elliptic Curve Cryptography over Primary Field WM-CS Technical Report (WM-CS-2005-12) , 2005 .

[13]  Jean-Pierre Hubaux,et al.  Securing wireless mesh networks , 2006, IEEE Wireless Communications.

[14]  Guangsong Li.  An Identity-Based Security Architecture for Wireless Mesh Networks , 2007, 2007 IFIP International Conference on Network and Parallel Computing Workshops (NPC 2007).

[15]  Marco Gruteser,et al.  Random channel hopping schemes for key agreement in wireless networks , 2009, 2009 IEEE 20th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications.

[16]  Zygmunt J. Haas,et al.  Securing ad hoc networks , 1999, IEEE Netw..

[17]  William A. Arbaugh,et al.  Toward secure key distribution in truly ad-hoc networks , 2003, 2003 Symposium on Applications and the Internet Workshops, 2003. Proceedings..

[18]  Hisham Dahshan,et al.  An Elliptic Curve Distributed Key Management for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks , 2010, 2010 IEEE 71st Vehicular Technology Conference.

[19]  Whitfield Diffie,et al.  New Directions in Cryptography , 1976, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory.

[20]  Paul C. van Oorschot,et al.  Authentication and authenticated key exchanges , 1992, Des. Codes Cryptogr..

[21]  Emmanuel Bresson,et al.  Provably secure authenticated group Diffie-Hellman key exchange , 2007, TSEC.

[22]  Rolf Blom,et al.  Non-Public Key Distribution , 1982, CRYPTO.

[23]  Jin Wang,et al.  A Variable Threshold-Value Authentication Architecture for Wireless Mesh Networks , 2014 .

[24]  Panganamala Ramana Kumar,et al.  RHEINISCH-WESTFÄLISCHE TECHNISCHE HOCHSCHULE AACHEN , 2001 .

[25]  Xiaoyao Xie,et al.  A Novel Group Key Agreement Protocol for Wireless Mesh Network , 2011 .

[26]  Henk C. A. van Tilborg,et al.  Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security, 2nd Ed , 2005 .

[27]  Jiejun Kong,et al.  Providing robust and ubiquitous security support for mobile ad-hoc networks , 2001, Proceedings Ninth International Conference on Network Protocols. ICNP 2001.

[28]  David Burton.  History of Mathematics an Introduction , 1988 .

[29]  Vipul Gupta,et al.  Energy analysis of public-key cryptography for wireless sensor networks , 2005, Third IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications.

[30]  Albert Levi,et al.  A distributed key establishment scheme for wireless mesh networks using identity-based cryptography , 2010, Q2SWinet '10.

[31]  Lan Wang,et al.  Design and implementation of a secure wireless mote-based medical sensor network , 2008, UbiComp.

[32]  Nitin H. Vaidya,et al.  Leveraging Channel Diversity for Key Establishment in Wireless Sensor Networks , 2006, Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM 2006. 25TH IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications.

[33]  Jangeun Jun,et al.  The nominal capacity of wireless mesh networks , 2003, IEEE Wirel. Commun..

[34]  Atsuko Miyaji,et al.  Efficient Elliptic Curve Exponentiation Using Mixed Coordinates , 1998, ASIACRYPT.

[35]  Torben P. Pedersen.  A Threshold Cryptosystem without a Trusted Party (Extended Abstract) , 1991, EUROCRYPT.

[36]  S. C. Shantz.  From Euclid's GCD to Montgomery Multiplication to the Great Divide , 2001 .

[37]  Rolf Blom,et al.  An Optimal Class of Symmetric Key Generation Systems , 1985, EUROCRYPT.

[38]  Tolga Acar,et al.  Analyzing and comparing Montgomery multiplication algorithms , 1996, IEEE Micro.

[39]  Martina Zitterbart,et al.  Towards Acceptable Public-Key Encryption in Sensor Networks , 2005, IWUC.

[40]  Peng Ning,et al.  An efficient scheme for authenticating public keys in sensor networks , 2005, MobiHoc '05.