Design of self-healing key distribution schemes

A self-healing key distribution scheme enables dynamic groups of users of an unreliable network to establish group keys for secure communication. In such a scheme, a group manager, at the beginning of each session, in order to provide a key to each member of the group, sends packets over a broadcast channel. Every user, belonging to the group, computes the group key by using the packets and some private information. The group manager can start multiple sessions during a certain time-interval, by adding/removing users to/from the initial group. The main property of the scheme is that, if during a certain session some broadcasted packet gets lost, then users are still capable of recovering the group key for that session simply by using the packets they have received during a previous session and the packets they will receive at the beginning of a subsequent one, without requesting additional transmission from the group manager. Indeed, the only requirement that must be satisfied, in order for the user to recover the lost keys, is membership in the group both before and after the sessions in which the broadcast messages containing the keys are sent. This novel and appealing approach to key distribution is quite suitable in certain military applications and in several Internet-related settings, where high security requirements need to be satisfied. In this paper we continue the study of self-healing key distribution schemes, introduced by Staddon et al. [37]. We analyze some existing constructions: we show an attack that can be applied to one of these constructions, in order to recover session keys, and two problems in another construction. Then, we present a new mechanism for implementing the self-healing approach, and we present an efficient construction which is optimal in terms of user memory storage. Finally, we extend the self-healing approach to key distribution, and we present a scheme which enables a user to recover from a single broadcast message all keys associated with sessions in which he is member of the communication group.