Lightweight Protection of Group Content Distribution

Abstract

Achieving security properties in distributed, hardware-limited, and unattended networks is a challenging task. This setting is challenging because an adversary can capture and physically compromise unattended nodes. In this setting, this paper presents one-way group communication protocols with strong security properties. In particular, how to send messages to a group of hardware-limited nodes with message secrecy and authenticity? We present several protocols and analyze them in terms of security, efficiency, and deployability. The resulting solutions are generic and can be useful in a variety of distributed systems.

Collusion-resilient broadcast encryption based on dual-evolving one-way function trees

“…Note that in case of message block when i > i p r e +1, the receiving node in P can then request a state synchronization and obtain the necessary key information from BC via a unicast. The last part of the broadcast message is the encrypted group content ctext , which can be used associated with a message authentication code (MAC) to ensure authenticity . When the freshness checking as well as the verification of the MAC are correct, the receiver will accept the session message and update the local session number.…”

“…Our dual evolution scheme includes a node‐key changing procedure. Similar key‐update mechanisms are introduced by Mauw et al and Szalachowski et al . Mauw's design is applied to a particular nodes‐to‐BC communication model, which is distinct from our network setting.…”

“…Unfortunately, existing broadcast encryption schemes can barely fulfill the earlier requirements simultaneously. Specifically, recent schemes are essentially leveraging modular exponentiation (e.g., Diffie–Hellman) or polynomial interpolation operations, which lead to expensive energy consumption. Furthermore, as the membership of the nodes changes dynamically, an added/removed node to/from the network can be undetectably captured by an adversary.…”

Secure broadcast in distributed networks with strong adversaries

“…For each session, nodes in S i and the BC establish the shared session key S K i to protect messages in that session. Authentication and protection of the broadcast transmission are out of scope of this paper, as existing approaches can be applied . If the BC wants to add or remove nodes from the privileged set, it executes the protocol again for the next session i + 1.…”

“…Szalachowski and Kotulski improve Schwenk's results by introducing a secure scheme in the face of node capture attacks . Their solution utilizes a hash‐chain‐based key update scheme and addresses security of the ciphertext transmission (from the BC to nodes), providing confidentiality, authentication, and weak freshness, and the security of such transmission is further studied .…”