Efficient group key management for dynamic peer networks

Abstract

In dynamic peer networks, how to promote the performance of group key management without sacrificing the desired security is a critical and difficult problem. In this paper, a secure, efficient and distributed group key management scheme is presented and its security is proved. The scheme is based on hierarchical key tree and multi-party key agreement, and has the desired properties, suck as key independence and statelessness. The related analysis shows that the ternary key tree is most applicable to group key management, and the corresponding key management scheme is efficient in the computation cost, storage cost and feasibility. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.