Toward Secure Key Distribution in Truly Ad-Hoc Networks

  • Authors:
  • Aram Khalili;Jonathan Katz;William A. Arbaugh

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-;-

  • Venue:
  • SAINT-W '03 Proceedings of the 2003 Symposium on Applications and the Internet Workshops (SAINT'03 Workshops)
  • Year:
  • 2003

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Ad-hoc network - and in particular wireless mobilead-hoc network - have unique characteristic and constraint that make traditional cryptographic mechanismsand assumptions inappropriate. In particular, it may notbe warranted to assume pre-existing shared secrets betweenmember of the network or the presence of a common PKI.Thus, the issue of key distribution in ad-hoc networks represent an important problem. Unfortunately, this issue hasbeen largely ignored; as an example, most protocols forsecure ad-hoc routing assume that key distribution has already taken place.Traditional key distribution schemes either do not applyin an ad-hoc scenario or are not efficient enough for mall,resource-constrained devices. We propose to combine efficient technique from identity-based (ID-based) and threshold cryptography to provide a mechanism that enables flexible and efficient key distribution while respecting the constraints of ad-hoc network. We also discuss the availablemechanisms and their suitability for the proposed task.