An efficient hierarchical group key management protocol for a ubiquitous computing environment

Abstract

We propose a new centralized hierarchical group key management protocol for a ubiquitous computing environment. The proposed scheme only uses XOR and hash operations during group key updates. Moreover, the order of the total message size sent during key updates is O(log n), where n is the size of the group. As a result, our scheme is very practical, scalable, and well suited for low-power mobile devices. We have also proved the security of our proposed protocol.