Proxy encryption based secure multicast in wireless mesh networks

A decentralized and self-healing secure multicast framework is proposed, which is based on the new multi-hop proxy encryption, in order to address the unique vulnerabilities of wireless mesh network. The topology aware key encryption key (KEK) is generated first. The session key, used as the traffic encryption key (TEK), is distributed along the key path. The routers only transform and forward the received message instead of decrypting and re-encrypting. Then the service data is encapsulated by the authenticated encryption efficiently. The proposal achieves the data confidentiality, the data integrity, the source authentication, and the backward/forward secrecy simultaneously. The highlight is threefold: (1) The centralized key distribution center, the trusted party and the private channel are eliminated. (2) All of the local traffic is broadcasted, which reduces the communication cost. (3) The self-healing mechanism cures the link failure caused by the failed routers and reconstructs the multicast key path. Compared with the similar schemes, the proposal has advantages with regard to the storage overheads, the computational delay, and the rekeying cost.