Secure Group Management in a Coalition Environment

摘要

This report results from a contract tasking University of Ireland Trading as Trinity College Dublin as follows: The contractor will investigate issues related to the formation and security of ad-hoc wireless networks in situations where teams are operating separated from their base location and possibly roving. The most capable group management systems available (for example, multicast protocol like VersaKey) employ a fixed group controller responsible for matching join-requests against the allowed-members list. Failure of this group manager disrupts communications and renders ineffective the entire group. Additionally, such ad-hoc schemes rely on forward confidentiality of departing nodes and backward confidentiality of newly joined nodes. Thus appropriate measures must be established to authenticate users and control access to resources and information. This effort will address these information assurance shortcomings.