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Dianzi Ke-ji Daxue xuebao

On the Security of Fast Secret Key Generation Protocol with Virtual Channel Approach

Chen Da-jian

Published Jan 1, 2015• 2 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

It is vitally important to generate keys and keep them secret in secure wireless communications. Due to the broadcast nature of wireless channels, secret key distribution is more vulnerable to attacks in wireless communication. An ingenious solution is to generate secret keys by using the multipath channel as a source of common randomness. To address the problems that the existing physical-based protocols have low key generation rate and high reliance on mobile nodes or environments, a fast secret key generation protocol with virtual channel approach was proposed by HUANG and WANG for static wireless networks. In this paper, we show that, in the presence of an eavesdropper with multiple antennas, the scheme does not improve the theoretical upper bound of the key generation rate with information-theory security. Thus, the protocol is not information-theory security.

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It is vitally important to generate keys and keep them secret in secure wireless communications. Due to the broadcast nature of wireless channels, secret key distribution is more vulnerable to attacks in wireless communication. An ingenious solution is to generate secret keys by using the multipath channel as a source of common randomness. To address the problems that the existing physical-based protocols have low key generation rate and high reliance on mobile nodes or environments, a fast secret key generation protocol with virtual channel approach was proposed by HUANG and WANG for static wireless networks. In this paper, we show that, in the presence of an eavesdropper with multiple antennas, the scheme does not improve the theoretical upper bound of the key generation rate with information-theory security. Thus, the protocol is not information-theory security.
Due to the broadcast nature of wireless channels, wireless communication is vulnerable to eavesdropping, message modification, and node impersonation. Securing the wireless communication requires the shared secret keys between the communicating entities. Traditional security schemes rely on public key infrastructures and cryptographic algorithms to manage secret keys. Recently, many physical-layer-based methods have been proposed as alternative solutions for key generation in wireless networks. These methods exploit the inherent randomness of the wireless fading channel to generate secret keys while providing information-theoretical security without intensive cryptographic computations. This article provides an overview of the existing PHY-based key generation schemes exploiting the randomness of the wireless channels. Specifically, we first introduce the fundamental and general framework of the PHY-based key generation schemes and then categorize them into two classes: received-signal-strength-based and channel- phase-based protocols. Finally, we present a performance comparison of them in terms of key disagreement probability, key generation rate, key bit randomness, scalability, and implementation issues.
Physical layer secret key generation exploits the inherent randomness of wireless channels. However, for wireless channels with long coherence time, key generation rate can be extremely low due to lack of randomness in channels. In this paper, a novel key generation scheme is proposed for a general wireless network where channels are static and each transmitter is equipped with two antennas. It integrates opportunistic beamforming and frequency diversity to achieve fast secret key generation. In this scheme, channel fluctuations are first induced by controlling amplitude and phase of each symbol in the training sequence on each antenna. Thus, key generation rate is significantly increased. However, the induced channel fluctuations lead to correlation between the legitimate channel and the eavesdropping channel, which compromises key secrecy. To this end, frequency diversity is then exploited to ensure that key secrecy grows with the key size. The secret key generation scheme is investigated in both narrowband and wideband systems, and its performance is evaluated through both theoretical analysis and simulations. Performance results have validated randomness and secrecy of secret keys and also illustrate that the proposed scheme can generate secret keys at a rate of 2Kb/s for narrowband systems and 20Kb/s for wideband systems.
Secure wireless communications is a challenging problem due to the shared nature of the wireless medium. Most existing security protocols apply cryptographic techniques for bit scrambling at the application layer by exploiting a shared secret key between pairs of communicating nodes. However, more recent research argues that multipath propagation - a salient feature of wireless channels - provides a physical resource for secure communications. In this context, we propose a protocol that exploits the inherent randomness in multipath wireless channels for generating secret keys through channel estimation and quantization. Our approach is particularly attractive in wideband channels which exhibit a large number of statistically independent degrees of freedom (DoF), thereby enabling the generation of large, more-secure, keys. We show that the resulting keys are distinct for distinct pairwise links with a probability that increases exponentially with the key-size/channel DoF. We also characterize the probability that the two users sharing a common link generate the same key. This characterization is used to analyze the energy consumption in successful acquisition of a secret key by the two users. For a given key size, our results show that there is an optimum transmit power, and an optimum quantization strategy, that minimizes the energy consumption. The proposed approach to secret key generation through channel quantization also obviates the problem of key pre-distribution inherent to many existing cryptographic approaches.
Wireless key generation in slow fading channels is challenging because of the limited channel variation and randomness. This paper proposes a novel artificial randomness (AR) assisted approach for fast key generation in slow fading environments. It integrates user-designed randomness into the channel probing to form a fast-changing combined channel to realize information-theory security. The analytical expressions of secret key capacity are derived. We find that it is possible to improve secret key capacity by introducing AR when legitimate users have a better channel condition than that of eavesdropper. We also find that the improved secret key capacity is proportional to the channel probing number and is bounded by the noise variance and channel condition. Simulation and experimental results show that AR approach can generate secret key effectively in slow fading environments by carefully designing probing numbers. Compared to existing work in literature, the proposed approach does not rely on multiple antennas or extra helpers, and it can be applied in both single antenna and multi-antenna systems.
At present, wireless communication technology greatly improves the transmission data rate, but at the same time, it also has higher and higher requirements for the realization of secure communication. From the perspective of information theory, the physical layer key system provides a new way to solve the problem of secure communication in wireless communication system. The uplink and downlink wireless channels with natural reciprocity are used as random sources to generate shared key. Firstly, this paper introduces the steps of a key distribution protocol with multi-level quantization based on the characteristics of wireless channel CSI. Secondly, the security of this kind of key distribution protocol is analyzed by the key generation rate and other evaluation metrics. Furthermore, it is verified by simulation in the typical channel model scenario of 4G communication mode. The simulation results show that the key distribution protocol based on the characteristics of wireless channel can achieve a key generation rate of 5 bits/resource block under the condition of high signal-to-noise ratio (such as 20dB) in the current communication network circumstance, and the generated key sequence has sufficient randomness, so as to achieve effective secure communication.
Wireless communication between two nodes in a multi-path, multi-hop network does not require that the forward transmission path and the reverse one are the same. However, if a physical-layer security scheme based on mutual channel-state-information (CSI) is used, they at least have to make sure that they use the same channels for secret-key generation. A protocol is proposed in this paper to achieve that purpose in a secure manner. An information-theoretic analysis of physical-layer key generation given in states that there are vulnerable key symbols that might be estimated by eavesdroppers. In this paper, we show how to protect those key symbols by means of physical-layer key encoding. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions on the code in order to achieve perfect secrecy, even when the eavesdropper knows the code, and derive the asymptotic code rate accordingly. We also discuss how to design the code when the number of vulnerable key symbols are not known.