Lightweight decentralized multicast-unicast key management method in wireless IPv6 networks

Key management is one of the principal security issues in multicast IPv6 networks. Owing to the multicast nature of information delivery in IPv6, and the mobility of network users, whenever a new node is granted to join or leave, a new key should be generated and distributed to every node in the network. Unfortunately, this approach increases the communication and storage cost of key management. While a number of algorithms have been proposed to address this issue, most of the existing approaches have to increase their encryption/decryption cycle in order to maintain the security level of the key management, thereby suffering from high computation cost. By focusing on the aforementioned criteria, we highlight the possibility of addressing these costs without having to sacrifice one for the sake of the other. In light of this, we propose a lightweight key management scheme for wireless IPv6 networks, which is capable of reducing communication, computation, and storage costs. A performance evaluation indicates the efficiency of our proposed scheme in reducing such costs, while at the same time maintaining both forward and backward security. In addition, the results from real test-bed show the efficiency of the proposed method for reducing the communication cost.