Synchronizing shaking sequences for generating symmetric keys
Daniel Bichler, Guido Stromberg, Mario Huemer · 2009
The wireless communication between small handheld devices can be easily eavesdropped by unauthorized devices. Hard restrictions in computing power and energy consumption favour symmetric key methods to encrypt the communication of small mobile devices. Symmetric encryption imposes questions on effective and user-friendly unobtrusive ways for key distribution. Instead of distributing or exchanging a key, the devices independently generate equal keys if and only if they are shaken together without exchanging any information during their independent key generation. The challenge herein is that both shaken devices recognize the starting point of the shaking process by there own at the same time. To this end, in this paper, we present an algorithm to independently synchronize the shaken devices so that reliable key generation becomes possible.