An elliptic curve secret sharing key management scheme for mobile ad hoc networks

In mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), traditional security solutions are not adequate due to the infrastructureless nature and the absence of centralized administration. In this paper, a threshold key management scheme for MANETs is presented. The proposed scheme is implemented using elliptic curve dlog-based cryptosystem. In this scheme, an off-line central authority (CA) is required in the initialization phase before network deployment. The CA creates and preloads the shares matrix for each mobile node in the network initialization phase. Each session member generates its private/public key pair, and the session public key by collaborating with its trusted neighbors. The generation of the node private/public key pair, and the session public key is performed without any prior communication between session members. The advantages of the proposed scheme are justified through extensive timing and network simulations.