On Some Methods for Unconditionally Secure Key Distributionand Broadcast Encryption

  • Authors:
  • Doug R. Stinson

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln NE 68588, USA

  • Venue:
  • Designs, Codes and Cryptography - Special issue: selected areas in cryptography I
  • Year:
  • 1997

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Abstract

This paper provides an exposition of methods by whicha trusted authority can distribute keys and/or broadcast a messageover a network, so that each member of a privileged subset ofusers can compute a specified key or decrypt the broadcast message.Moreover, this is done in such a way that no coalition is ableto recover any information on a key or broadcast message theyare not supposed to know. The problems are studied using thetools of information theory, so the security provided is unconditional(i.e., not based on any computational assumption).We begin by surveying some useful schemes for key distributionthat have been presented in the literature, giving backgroundand examples (but not too many proofs). In particular, we lookmore closely at the attractive concept of key distribution patterns,and present a new method for making these schemes more efficientthrough the use of resilient functions. Then we present a generalapproach to the construction of broadcast schemes that combineskey predistribution schemes with secret sharing schemes. We discussthe Fiat-Naor Broadcast Scheme, as well as other, new schemesthat can be constructed using this approach.