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IET Communications

Lightweight group key distribution schemes based on pre‐shared pairwise keys

Lein Harn, Ching-Fang Hsu, Zhe Xia

Published May 15, 2020• 12 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In a secure communication, a one‐time session key is needed to be shared among all participants. Most well‐known key distribution schemes, such as Diffie–Hellman public‐key key distribution scheme invented in 1976 and quantum key distribution scheme invented in 1984 (also called the BB84 scheme), can only allow two users to share a key in conventional one‐to‐one communications. There are many research papers in the literature to propose group key distribution schemes for multiple participants in modern group communications. In this study, the authors propose lightweight group key distributions using pre‐shared pairwise keys. The authors first propose a three‐party group key distribution scheme. They then extend the basic three‐party scheme to establish a group key for a large size of group communications. The proposed generalised schemes can be based to any type of pairwise key distribution schemes, e.g. either quantum or non‐quantum. Moreover, both generalised multi‐party group key distribution schemes are lightweight. The main operations in the proposed schemes are key comparison between two or more than two keys (i.e. logic XOR operation) and the computation of key derivation functions.

DOI
10.1049/iet-com.2019.1345

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In a secure communication, a one‐time session key is needed to be shared among all participants. Most well‐known key distribution schemes, such as Diffie–Hellman public‐key key distribution scheme invented in 1976 and quantum key distribution scheme invented in 1984 (also called the BB84 scheme), can only allow two users to share a key in conventional one‐to‐one communications. There are many research papers in the literature to propose group key distribution schemes for multiple participants in modern group communications. In this study, the authors propose lightweight group key distributions using pre‐shared pairwise keys. The authors first propose a three‐party group key distribution scheme. They then extend the basic three‐party scheme to establish a group key for a large size of group communications. The proposed generalised schemes can be based to any type of pairwise key distribution schemes, e.g. either quantum or non‐quantum. Moreover, both generalised multi‐party group key distribution schemes are lightweight. The main operations in the proposed schemes are key comparison between two or more than two keys (i.e. logic XOR operation) and the computation of key derivation functions.
Key distribution is a core building block for secure communication. In group communication, key distribution is not a simple extension of two-party communication. Many approaches were proposed in the classical field. Nevertheless, they are still based on the assumption that some computational problems are hard. Based on quantum mechanics lows, new field emerges allowing to generate and share a secret and secure key between two, or more, participants. In this paper, we propose new multiparty key distribution protocol in ring-organised communication group based on the well-known quantum key distribution protocol BB84. The security of the proposed solution is based on the unconditional security of the BB84 allowed by the mechanics lows and the mathematical proved secure operation XOR. In our proposed solution, each participant collaborates with a partial key in order to obtain at the end of the protocol the same group key that can be used for encryption aims. We also analyse and verify security properties of the proposed protocol. This is done using a probabilistic symbolic model-checker, the PRISM tool.
Key distribution is a core building block for secure communication. In group communication, key distribution is not a simple extension of two-party communication. Many approaches were proposed in the classical field. Nevertheless, they are still based on the assumption that some computational problems are hard. Based on quantum mechanics lows, new field emerges allowing to generate and share a secret and secure key between two, or more, participants. In this paper, we propose new multiparty key distribution protocol in ring-organised communication group based on the well-known quantum key distribution protocol BB84. The security of the proposed solution is based on the unconditional security of the BB84 allowed by the mechanics lows and the mathematical proved secure operation XOR. In our proposed solution, each participant collaborates with a partial key in order to obtain at the end of the protocol the same group key that can be used for encryption aims. We also analyse and verify security properties of the proposed protocol. This is done using a probabilistic symbolic model-checker, the PRISM tool.
Key Management techniques are exercised to distribute and update keys such that illegitimate parties cannot ingress group communications. Key management, however can exhibit information about the stream of group association, such as group size and the number of joining and leaving users. This is a threat to applications with confidential group membership information. This project proposes a new key management paradigm which a combination of traditional broadcast encryption and group key agreement which never reveals the group dynamic information to outsiders and achieves both forward secrecy and backward secrecy. It provides a secure key management model not only with public and private key but also two more keys called group key and session key. It is distributed to multiple user overtime. It also overcomes the limitation of quantum point to point key sharing. It offers reliability and convenience of use, as well as to introduce a secure and efficient key management technique for any quantum cryptography network in real time.
Two recently published papers propose some very simple key distribution schemes designed to enable two or more parties to establish a shared secret key with the aid of a third party. Unfortunately, as we show, most of the schemes are inherently insecure and all are incompletely specified - moreover, claims that the schemes are inherently lightweight are shown to be highly misleading. We also briefly critique a somewhat related very recent paper by the same authors that uses similar techniques to achieve what are claimed to be secure multiparty computations.
ABSTRACT This study proposes a new lightweight quantum key distribution (LQKD) protocol based on the four‐particle cluster state within a quantum‐restricted environment. The protocol enables a quantum‐capable user to simultaneously establish two separate secret keys with two “classical” users, who are limited to performing only the Hadamard operation and measurements in the basis. By adopting a one‐way qubit transmission approach, the proposed protocol addresses several limitations of existing semi‐quantum key distribution (SQKD) schemes that rely on two‐way or circular transmission methods: (1) it eliminates the need for classical participants to be equipped with costly quantum devices to defend against quantum Trojan horse attacks; (2) it reduces the qubit transmission distance; and (3) it achieves higher qubit efficiency. Consequently, the proposed LQKD protocol is both more lightweight and practical than existing SQKD protocols. Furthermore, the security analysis shows that, in the ideal case, the protocol achieves the same level of security as fully quantum protocols. Finally, the study proves the unconditional security of the protocol in the non‐ideal case, demonstrating a noise tolerance close to that of the BB84 protocol.
Quantum communication plays an important role in quantum information science due to its unconditional security. In practical implementations, the users of each communication vary with the transmitted information, and hence not all users are required to participate in each communication round. Therefore, improving the flexibility and efficiency of the actual communication process is highly demanded. Here, we propose a theoretical quantum communication scheme that realizes secret key distribution for both the two-party quantum key distribution (QKD) and multi-party quantum secret sharing (QSS) modes. The sender, Alice, can freely select one or more users to share keys among all users, and nonactive users will not participate in the process of secret key sharing. Numerical simulations show the superiority of the proposed scheme in transmission distance and secure key rate. Consequently, the proposed scheme is valuable for secure quantum communication network scenarios.