3rd International ICST Symposium on Information Assurance and Security

Research Article

Hierarchical Multi-Party Key Agreement for Wireless Networks

  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1109/IAS.2007.82,
        author={Sigurd Eskeland and Vladimir  Oleshchuk},
        title={Hierarchical Multi-Party Key Agreement for Wireless Networks},
        proceedings={3rd International ICST Symposium on  Information Assurance and Security},
        publisher={IEEE},
        proceedings_a={IAS},
        year={2007},
        month={9},
        keywords={Cryptographic protocols  conference key protocols  hierarchical key agreement.},
        doi={10.1109/IAS.2007.82}
    }
    
  • Sigurd Eskeland
    Vladimir Oleshchuk
    Year: 2007
    Hierarchical Multi-Party Key Agreement for Wireless Networks
    IAS
    IEEE
    DOI: 10.1109/IAS.2007.82
Sigurd Eskeland1,*, Vladimir Oleshchuk1,*
  • 1: Agder University College Grooseveien 36 4876 Grimstad, Norway
*Contact email: sigurd.eskeland@hia.no, vladimir.oleshchuk@hia.no

Abstract

A common property of practically all multi-party key agreement protocols is that they are non-hierarchical, i.e., they do not support user hierarchies. However, in real life, it is likely that members of groups and organizations differ in ranking according to their job positions so that people of higher rankings are privileged the same and higher privileged information than people of lower rankings. Hierarchical access control schemes address this issue, but they assume rather fixed scenarios based on centralized key distribution with predefined root keys and key parameters set by a trusted center. In this paper, we propose a decentralized efficient hierarchical multi-party key agreement protocol well-suited for ad-hoc wireless networks that ensures secure user hierarchies.