English

KERMAN: A Key Establishment Algorithm based on Harvesting Randomness in MANETs

Cryptography and Security 2015-04-16 v1

Abstract

Establishing secret common randomness between two or multiple devices in a network resides at the root of communication security. The problem is traditionally decomposed into a randomness generation stage (randomness purity is subject to employing often costly true random number generators) and a key-agreement information exchange stage, which can rely on public-key infrastructure or on key wrapping. In this paper, we propose KERMAN, an alternative key establishment algorithm for ad-hoc networks which works by harvesting randomness directly from the network routing metadata, thus achieving both pure randomness generation and (implicitly) secret-key agreement. Our algorithm relies on the route discovery phase of an ad-hoc network employing the Dynamic Source Routing protocol, is lightweight, and requires minimal communication overhead.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1504.03744,
  title  = {KERMAN: A Key Establishment Algorithm based on Harvesting Randomness in MANETs},
  author = {Mohammad Reza Khalili Shoja and George Traian Amariucai and Shuangqing Wei and Jing Deng},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1504.03744},
  year   = {2015}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T09:16:09.521Z