Key agreement in wireless networks with active adversaries
AssigneesCalifornia Institute of Technology, Purdue Research Foundation
InventorsHongyi YAO, Tracey C. HO, Cristina NITA-ROTARU
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A network and related methods for transmitting processes in a network secretly and securely is described. The network use keys, through path-key establishment and a key pool bootstrapping, to ensure that packets are transmitted and received properly and secretly in the presence of one or more adversarial nodes.
Claims8
A network of computers with error correction code configured to transmit a key secretly and securely between a source node and a receiver node which do not a priori share a key, so as to establish a shared key between the source node and the receiver node, the network of computers comprising:
- a first computer-based workstation operating as the source node and configured to encode the key into a plurality of distinct encoded source files, encoding being operatively implemented in one of:
- a) hardware, b) software, or c) a combination of hardware and software;
- a plurality of computer-based workstations operating as a plurality of intermediate nodes and configured to each receive a distinct encoded source file of the plurality of distinct encoded source files and transmit, to the receiver node, the distinct encoded source file when requested by the receiver;
- and
- a second computer-based workstation operating as the receiver node and configured to decode the plurality of distinct encoded source files and retrieve the key to establish the shared key, decoding being operatively implemented in one of:
- a) hardware, b) software, or c) a combination of hardware and software.
A network of computers with error correction code configured to transmit a key pool secretly and securely comprising:
- (i) a plurality of computer-based workstations operating as a plurality of intermediate nodes and configured to each:
- receive one or more, but not all, individual keys of the key pool, the key pool comprising a plurality of individual keys,
- encode independently from other nodes of the plurality of intermediate nodes, using network error correction codes, the one or more individual keys, wherein the encoded one or more individual keys are represented by a vector that contains random linear combinations of the one or more individual keys, encoding being operatively implemented in one of:
- a) hardware, b) software, or c) a combination of hardware and software, and
- transmit the encoded one or more individual keys to a receiver node, when requested;
- and
- (ii) a computer-based workstation operating as the receiver node and configured to decode encoded one or more individual keys received from a subset of the intermediate nodes, using a decoding algorithm to retrieve a specified subset of the key pool, decoding being operatively implemented in one of:
- a) hardware, b) software, or c) a combination of hardware and software.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.