A group secure key generation and transfer protocol based on ICMetrics

Secure group communications are more prone to attacks as compared to the conventional one to one communication. Every client in a group can be seen as a single source of attack, therefore it is important to design a robust security scheme that will protect all the individual clients and hence the entire group. In this paper a novel security architecture has been presented, that provides a secure group key generation and transfer protocol that is based on ICMetrics. The salient features of the protocol include a single collaborative key generation scheme that is initiated through client authentication. Also provided is a rekeying procedure that is important in maintaining the freshness of the key and offers perfect forward secrecy. The above features are based on the use of ICMetrics to provide a security protocol that is scalable and secure. The presented protocol has been simulated for varying group population sizes using C++ and Maple. The resulting running times for various stages of the protocol have been studied

Group-based secure communication for wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are a newly developed networking technology consisting of multifunctional sensor nodes that are small in size and communicate over short distances. Continuous growth in the use of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) in sensitive applications such as military or hostile environments and also generally has resulted m a requirement for effective security mechanisms in the system design In order to protect the sensitive data and the sensor readings, shared keys should be used to encrypt the exchanged messages between communicating nodes. Many key management schemes have been developed recently and a serious threat highlighted in all of these schemes is that of node capture attacks, where an adversary gains full control over a sensor node through direct physical access. This can lead an adversary to compromise the communication of an entire WSN. Additionally ignoring security issues related to data aggregation can also bring large damage to WSNs. Furthermore, in case an aggregator node, group leader or cluster head node fails there should be a secure and efficient way of electing or selecting a new aggregator or group leader node in order to avoid adversary node to be selected as a new group leader. A key management protocol for mobile sensor nodes is needed to enable them to securely communicate and authenticate with the rest of the WSN