Key management scheme without secure channel for ad hoc networks
Yumin Wang · Journal of Communications · 2010
Key management is one of the important issues for the ad hoc networks security. According to the characteristics of ad hoc networks, a threshold key management scheme without secure channel was proposed. In the proposed scheme, the role of the traditional certification authority (CA) is completed by a local register center and n distributed key generation centers, which can avoid the single point of failure. By using threshold cryptography, the ad hoc interior members collaborate to conduct the distributed generation the system private key. The mutual authentication between the user and distributed key generation centers was provided through the public cryptosystem based on the bilinear pairings. The user’s private key is signed blindly to ensure that the private keys can be delivered securely in the public channel and cannot be eavesdropped. The analysis results show that the proposed scheme achieves the trust level III, has fault tolerance and is secure against the active and passive attacks. It is concluded that the proposed scheme satisfies the security requirements of ad hoc networks and reduces largely the cost of computation and storage.