Brief announcement: lightweight key agreement and digital certificates for wireless sensor networks

ABSTRACT

Key agreement and digital certificates allow bootstrapping secure communication links and verifying identities or information. Thus, they are the cornerstone of many basic security functionalities. However, the resource-constrained nature of wireless sensor nodes limits the use of traditional solutions in wireless sensor networks. We propose a novel scheme allowing for fast, resource-friendly, and distributed key agreement and verification of information, featuring the efficiency of symmetric-key cryptography and the functionality of public-key certificates. The core idea of our system relies on the cryptographic association of identification information with polynomial shares. This concept allows the base station of a sensor network to sign node identification and configuration information such as routing addresses or access control roles. The information is signed by means of the polynomial shares distributed to nodes creating a lightweight digital certificate for each node. The proposed system operates in a fully stand-alone and distributed way, being able to perform a combined key agreement and lightweight digital certificate verification handshake within a few milliseconds with very low memory requirements.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.0 General
          Subjects: Security and protection (e.g., firewalls)

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.1 Network Architecture and Design
          Subjects: Wireless communication

General Terms:
Algorithms, Performance, Security

Keywords:
digital certificates, distributed algorithms, key establishment, wireless sensor networks