Cost‐effective polynomial‐based multicast–unicast key distribution framework for secure group communication in IPv6 multicast networks
G. Vinoth Chakkaravarthy, Alli Periyakaruppan, Raja Lavanya · IET Information Security · 2016
Security and efficiency are the two contradictory objectives to be achieved in designing a secure key distribution protocol for a resource constraint wireless multicast IPv6 networks. In this study, the authors propose a polynomial‐based multicast–unicast key distribution technique in which the group key should be securely distributed within the group with minimum overhead. The first dimension deals with the scalability problem, which is addressed by dividing the network into subgroups and each subgroup is managed by a subgroup manager. To achieve the efficiency, the transmission level is separated as unicast and multicast where unicast supports key generation and multicast uses polynomial P ( x ) for distributing group key without encryption. The second dimension aims at reducing communication, computation and storage costs of the proposed technique during join and leave. The third dimension focuses on the security aspects. To attain these three dimensions, the proposed technique has been implemented using a tree‐based key management scheme and the performance is analysed with the existing schemes. From the observations, the performance of the proposed scheme is satisfactory in terms of communication, computation and storage costs as well as security.