| Secure and efficient group/multicast communication is an important area of research for tactical networks. Such forms of communication are essential for efficient collaborative planning, command and control, and situational awareness based applications. In order to realize secure group communication on the battlefield secure multicast routing must be available, and the necessary cryptographic keys distributed to the current group members. The routes must be maintained, and the keys distributed, despite changes in network node position, network topology, communication channel performance, etc. The most promising scalable algorithms for group key management are the key-tree algorithms; most prominent among them is the logical key hierarchy (LKH) algorithm.
This paper presents an efficient algorithm for secure group key management of users specifically designed for use in dynamic tactical networks and other mobile ad hoc networks (MANETS). The algorithm, OFC/X has superior communication costs; it outperforms other algorithms in dynamic, heterogeneous ad hoc networks such as tactical networks when each algorithm has the same set of routes available from the group manager to the group members. The key to OFC/X improved performance is the assumption that the group key manager has knowledge of the value of the appropriate communication cost metric of the available paths for distributing keys. OFC/X allows the manager to make better use of this knowledge than previous algorithms.
This paper describes the OFC/X algorithm. We present analytical results comparing the performance of OFC/X with algorithms that have appeared in the literature. We also compare through simulation the performance of OFC/X with other multicast keying algorithms.
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| Dr. Matt has been a researcher at SPARTA Inc since 2005, Prior to joining SPARTA he spent 16 years at McAfee / Network Associates Research and Sandia National Laboratories. His research interests include key management and authentication techniques for MANETS and resource constrained systems. He has significant related experience in Tactical Network Security. He has been a consultant on security mechanisms for component based routing for ARL on routing security for Future Combat Systems TTA as well as an associate investigator in efficient key management techniques for ARL. Dr Matt has also been a consultant on Byzantine fault tolerance key management techniques for the DARPA funded Intrusion Tolerant CORBA project and mobile agent security for DARPA’s Active-Nets program and the DARPA funded Self Protecting Mobile Agents project.
Dr. Matt is currently the Principal investigator for the DARPA funded SEPAA project, which is researching low bandwidth, low-interactive, access control techniques for protecting network infrastructures, and he is the CoPI for ARL’s CT&N Highly Efficient Secure and Survivable Infrastructures task area. Dr Matt has served on recent information assurance related panels IA for Network Centric Operation at the 2004 DoD University Research Initiative Workshop on Critical Infrastructure Protection and High Confidence, Adaptable Software, as well as the invited Sensor Network Security panel at the 2004 ACM Workshop on Security of Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks. He was a presenter on efficient multicast key management at this year’s ARL IA Strategic Planning Workshop.
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