Distributive key management for mobile ad hoc networks

Security of mobile ad hoc networks is built upon a reliable key management system to generate and distribute symmetric encryption/decryption keys for communicating parties. While central servers generate and distribute the keys in traditional wired networks, distributive key management systems are used in mobile ad hoc networks where central approaches will fail in such dynamic, high mobility networks. Threshold cryptography has been proposed to provide a reliable, distributive key management for networks. In an (n, t+1) threshold system, there are n servers to provide key generation and distribution when needed for the whole network. From these n servers, any x servers (t < x <= n) can co-operate and generate a key for any node. Until now, threshold cryptography has remained only a theory. No practical key management system has been proposed to use threshold cryptography that mentioned what kind of shares servers will have in common and the practical way of creating the key from these shares. In this paper, we will construct a practical (n, t+1)-threshold key management system using maximum distance separable codes (MDS).