Description

Abstract

With the emergence of diverse group-based services, multiple multicast groups are likely to

coexist in a single network, and users may subscribe to multiple groups simultaneously. However,

the existing group key management (GKM) schemes, aiming to secure communication within a

single group, are not suitable in multiple multicast group environments because of inefficient use

of keys, and much larger rekeying overheads. In this paper, we propose a new GKM scheme for

multiple multicast groups, called the master-key-encryption-based multiple group key

management (MKE-MGKM) scheme. The MKE-MGKM scheme exploits asymmetric keys, i.e., a

master key and multiple slave keys, which are generated from the proposed master key encryption

(MKE) algorithm and is used for efficient distribution of the group key. It alleviates the rekeying

overhead by using the asymmetry of the master and slave keys, i.e., even if one of the slave keys

is updated, the remaining ones can still be unchanged by modifying only the master key.