Secure Group Communication Over wired/wireless networks

Research Areas: End System Security, Network Security,

Principal Investigator: Xukai Zou

Secure group communications (SGC) refers to a setting in which a group of participants can send and receive messages (sent to the group members), in a way that outsiders are unable to glean information even if they are able to intercept the messages. SGC is important because several prevalent applications require it. These applications include teleconferencing, tele-medicine, real-time information services, distributed interactive simulations, collaborative work, interactive games and the deployment of VPN (Virtual Private Networks). The goals for this project are four-fold: 1. study various issues enabling SGC which include, but are not limited to, group key management, burst behavior and efficient burst operations, membership management, group member admission control, authentication and non-repudiation; 2. study and provide solutions for specific SGC scenarios such as dynamic conferencing and SGC with hierarchical access control; 3. investigate research challenges for SGC over wireless/mobile environments; 4. integrate research results into the curriculum and perform public dissemination of findings and software.

Keywords: secure group communication, key management, access control, wireless