A Dynamic Symmetric Key Generation at Wireless Link Layer: Information-Theoretic Perspectives

Abstract

The expansion of wireless communication introduces security vulnerabilities, emphasizing the essential need for secure systems that prioritize confidentiality, integrity, and other key aspects of data protection. Since, computational security acknowledges the possibility of breaches when adequate computational resources are available that is why information-theoretic security is being explored that suggests the existence of unbreakable cryptographic systems, even in the presence of limitless processing power. Secret key exchange has traditionally relied on RSA or DH protocols, but researchers are now exploring innovative approaches for sharing secret keys among wirless network devices, leveraging physical or link layer characteristics. This research seeks to revolutionize secure multi-party key acquisition in wireless networks, capitalizing on information-theoretic security and collaborative data extraction. It comprehensively organize and elucidate the information-theoretic aspects of secret key generation within the lower layers of wireless networks, especially the link layer, proposes a novel theoretical framework for the dynamic acquisition of symmetric secret keys, and responds to contemporary information security challenges by relying on information theory principles rather than vulnerable mathematical relationships in the post-quantum period. A new cryptographic key can be generated using a straightforward method, and when it's combined (XORed) with the previous key, it creates a continuously changing secret for encryption and decryption. This approach enhances security because as attackers attempt to break the encryption, the system generates fresh, dynamic keys, making it progressively more challenging for them to succeed. The research work in question integrates key renewal, or how often keys are updated (dynamic keys), with a security off-period. It introduces a framework for determining the best key refresh rate based on the anticipated rate at which keys might be compromised.