Institute for Systems Research Technical Reports

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/4376

This archive contains a collection of reports generated by the faculty and students of the Institute for Systems Research (ISR), a permanent, interdisciplinary research unit in the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland. ISR-based projects are conducted through partnerships with industry and government, bringing together faculty and students from multiple academic departments and colleges across the university.

Browse

Filters

19981

Settings

Author: search.filters.author.Corson, M. ScottSubject: search.filters.subject.information visualization

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    A Distributed Shared Key Generation Procedure Using Fractional Keys
    (1998) Poovendran, R.; Corson, M. Scott; Baras, John S.; ISR; CSHCN
    We present a new class of distributed key generation and recoveryalgorithms suitable for group communication systems where the groupmembership is either static or slowly time-varying, and must be tightlycontrolled.

    The proposed key generation approach allows entities whichmayhave only partial trust in each other to jointly generate a shared keywithout the aid of an external third party. The group collectivelygenerates and maintains a dynamic group parameter, and the shared key isgenerated using a strong, one-way function of this parameter.

    This schemealso provides perfect forward secrecy. The validity of key generation canbe checked using verifiable secret sharing techniques. The key retrievalmethod does not require the keys to be stored in an external retrievalcenter.

    We note that many Internet-based applications may have theserequirements. Fulfillment of these requirements is realized through theuse of fractional keys--a distributed technique recently developed toenhance the security of distributed systems in a non-cryptographicmanner.