A survey of key management for secure group communication

ABSTRACT

Group communication can benefit from IP multicast to achieve scalable exchange of messages. However, there is a challenge of effectively controlling access to the transmitted data. IP multicast by itself does not provide any mechanisms for preventing nongroup members to have access to the group communication. Although encryption can be used to protect messages exchanged among group members, distributing the cryptographic keys becomes an issue. Researchers have proposed several different approaches to group key management. These approaches can be divided into three main classes: centralized group key management protocols, decentralized architectures and distributed key management protocols. The three classes are described here and an insight given to their features and goals. The area of group key management is then surveyed and proposed solutions are classified according to those characteristics.

REFERENCES

• 1: Ballardie, A. 1996. Scalable Multicast Key Distribution. RFC 1949.
• 2: T. Ballardie , J. Crowcroft, Multicast-specific security threats and counter-measures, Proceedings of the 1995 Symposium on Network and Distributed System Security (SNDSS'95), p.2, February 16-17, 1995
• 3: Klaus Becker , Uta Wille, Communication complexity of group key distribution, Proceedings of the 5th ACM conference on Computer and communications security, p.1-6, November 02-05, 1998, San Francisco, California, United States [doi>10.1145/288090.288094]
• 4: Colin Boyd, On Key Agreement and Conference Key Agreement, Proceedings of the Second Australasian Conference on Information Security and Privacy, p.294-302, July 07-09, 1997
• 5: Bob Briscoe, MARKS: Zero Side Effect Multicast Key Management Using Arbitrarily Revealed Key Sequences, Proceedings of the First International COST264 Workshop on Networked Group Communication, p.301-320, November 17-20, 1999
• 6: Burmester, M. and Desmedt, Y. 1994. A secure and efficient conference key distribution system (extended abstract). In Advances in Cryptology---EUROCRYPT 94, A. D. Santis, Ed., Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 950. Springer-Verlag, New York, pp. 275--286.
• 7: Canetti, R., Garay, J., Itkis, G., Micciancio, D., Naor, M., and Pinkas, B. 1999a. Multicast Security: A Taxonomy and Some Efficient Constructions. In Proceedings of the IEEE INFOCOM. Vol. 2. (New Yok, N.Y., Mar.). 708--716.
• 8: Canetti, R., Malkin, T., and Nissim, K. 1999b. Efficient communication-storage tradeoffs for multicast encryption. In Advances in Cryptology---EUROCRYPT '99, J. Stem, Ed. Lectures Notes in Computer Science, vol. 1599. Springer-Verlag, New York, pp. 459--474.
• 9: Chang, I., Engel, R., Kandlur, D., Pendarakis, D., and Saha, D. 1999. Key management for secure internet multicast using boolean function minimization techniques. In IEEE INFOCOM. Vol. 2. (New York, March 1999), 689--698.
• 10: DeCleene, B., Dondeti, L., Griffin, S., Hardjono, T., Kiwior, D., Kurose, J., Towsley, D., Vasudevan, S., and Zhang, C. 2001. Secure group communications for wireless networks. In Proceedings of the MILCOM. (June).
• 11: Deering, S. 1989. Host Extensions for IP Multicasting. RFC 1112.
• 12: Diffie, W. and Hellman, M. E. 1976. New directions in cryptography. IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory IT-22, 6 (Nov.), 644--654.
• 13: Dondeti, L., Mukherjee, S., and Samal, A. 1999a. A distributed group key management scheme for secure many-to-many communication. Tech. Rep. PINTL-TR-207-99, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland.
• 14: Dondeti, L., Mukherjee, S., and Samal, A. 1999b. Scalable secure one-to-many group communication using dual encryption. Comput. Commun. 23, 17 (Nov.), 1681--1701.
• 15: Fenner, W. 1997. Internet Group Management Protocol, Version 2. RFC 2236.
• 16: Oded Goldreich , Shafi Goldwasser , Silvio Micali, How to construct random functions, Journal of the ACM (JACM), v.33 n.4, p.792-807, Oct. 1986 [doi>10.1145/6490.6503]
• 17: Hardjono, T. and Tsudik, G. 2000. IP multicast security: Issues and directions. Ann. Telecom. 324--340.
• 18: Harney, H. and Muckenhirn, C. 1997a. Group Key Management Protocol (GKMP) Specification. RFC 2093.
• 19: Harney, H. and Muckenhirn, C. 1997b. Group Key Management Protocol (GKMP) Architecture. RFC 2094.
• 20: Yongdae Kim , Adrian Perrig , Gene Tsudik, Simple and fault-tolerant key agreement for dynamic collaborative groups, Proceedings of the 7th ACM conference on Computer and communications security, p.235-244, November 01-04, 2000, Athens, Greece [doi>10.1145/352600.352638]
• 21: Li, M., Poovendran, R., and Berenstein, C. 2001. Optimization of key storage for secure. In Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS). (John Hopkins, Mar.).
• 22: McDaniel, P., Prakash, A., and Honeyman, P. 1999. Antigone: A flexible framework for secure group communication. In Proceedings of the 8th USENIX Security Symposium. (Washington, D.C. Aug.). 99--114.
• 23: McGrew, D. A. and Sherman, A. T. 1998. Key establishment in large dynamic groups using one-way function trees. Tech. Rep. No. 0755 (May), TIS Labs at Network Associates, Inc., Glenwood, Md.
• 24: Meyer, D. 1998. Administratively Scoped IP Multicast. RFC 2365.
• 25: Mills, D. L. 1992. Network Time Protocol (Version 3) Specification, Implementation and Analysis. RFC 1305.
• 26: Suvo Mittra, Iolus: a framework for scalable secure multicasting, Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM '97 conference on Applications, technologies, architectures, and protocols for computer communication, p.277-288, September 14-18, 1997, Cannes, France
• 27: Refik Molva , Alain Pannetrat, Scalable multicast security in dynamic groups, Proceedings of the 6th ACM conference on Computer and communications security, p.101-112, November 01-04, 1999, Kent Ridge Digital Labs, Singapore [doi>10.1145/319709.319723]
• 28: Moyer, M. J., Rao, J. R., and Rohatgi, P. 1999. A survey of security issues in multcast communications. IEEE Netw. Mag. 13, 6 (Nov./Dec.), 12--23.
• 29: Perrig, A. 1999. Efficient collaborative key management protocols for secure autonomous group communication. In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Cryptographic Techniques and E-Commerce (CrypTEC'99). (Hong Kong, China, July). M. Blum and C H Lee, Eds. City University of Hong Kong Press, Hong Kong, China, pp. 192--202.
• 30: Adrian Perrig , Dawn Song , J. D. Tygar, ELK, a New Protocol for Efficient Large-Group Key Distribution, Proceedings of the 2001 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, p.247, May 14-16, 2001
• 31: Sandro Rafaeli , David Hutchison, Hydra: A Decentralised Group Key Management, Proceedings of the 11th IEEE International Workshops on Enabling Technologies: nfrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises, p.62-67, June 10-12, 2002
• 32: Sandro Rafaeli , Laurent Mathy , David Hutchison, EHBT: An Efficient Protocol for Group Key Management, Proceedings of the Third International COST264 Workshop on Networked Group Communication, p.159-171, November 07-09, 2001
• 33: Rivest, R. 1992. The MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm. RFC 1321.
• 34: Rodeh, O., Birman, K., and Dolev, D. 2000. Optimized group rekey for group communication systems. In Network and Distributed System Security. (San Diego, Calif., Feb.).
• 35: Bruce Schneier, Applied cryptography (2nd ed.): protocols, algorithms, and source code in C, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 1995
• 36: Sanjeev Setia , Samir Koussih , Sushil Jajodia , Eric Harder, Kronos: A Scalable Group Re-Keying Approach for Secure Multicast, Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, p.215, May 14-17, 2000
• 37: Michael Steiner , Gene Tsudik , Michael Waidner, Diffie-Hellman key distribution extended to group communication, Proceedings of the 3rd ACM conference on Computer and communications security, p.31-37, March 14-15, 1996, New Delhi, India [doi>10.1145/238168.238182]
• 38: Waldvogel, M., Caronni, G., Sun, D., Weiler, N., and Plattner, B. 1999. The VersaKey framework: Versatile group key management. IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. (Special Issue on Middleware) 17, 9 (Aug.), 1614--1631.
• 39: Wallner, D., Harder, E., and Agee, R. 1999. Key Management for Multicast: Issues and Architectures. RFC 2627.
• 40: Ingo Wegener, The complexity of Boolean functions, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 1987
• 41: Nathalie Weiler, SEMSOMM--A Scalable Multiple Encryption Scheme for One-To-Many Multicast, Proceedings of the 10th IEEE International Workshops on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises, p.231-236, June 20-22, 2001
• 42: Chung Kei Wong , Mohamed Gouda , Simon S. Lam, Secure group communications using key graphs, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON), v.8 n.1, p.16-30, Feb. 2000 [doi>10.1109/90.836475]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.2 Network Protocols

Additional Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.6 MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
      K.6.5 Security and Protection (D.4.6, K.4.2)

General Terms:
Design, Management, Security

Keywords:
Group Key Distribution, Multicast Security