Secret Key Exchange in Wireless Networks - 02/11/2011

Cankut Orakçal

Title: Secret Key Exchange in Wireless Networks

Abstract: Since the presence of a certificate authority or a key management center is unlikely in a wireless environment, there is a need for on-demand key exchange in wireless networks to provide confidentiality and authentication. In this talk, we are going to present three secret key exchange schemes in wireless networks that make use of the randomness inherent in wireless channel and provide defense against passive and active adversaries without any assumption on computational power. The main tools of these schemes are inevitable packet losses to an attacker due to time and frequency dependent randomness in wireless channels, reciprocity of the transfer function of the wireless multipath channel, and the rapid spatial decorrelation of the channel response. After analyzing the schemes, we will see that a clear physical-layer understanding is crucial to come up with solutions to the unique challenges of the wireless key exchange problem.

-- JiaxiJin - 09 Feb 2011