Group Key Agreement Protocol Clause Samples

Group Key Agreement Protocol. Group Key Agreement protocols find applications in many group applications including telephone and video conferences, remote consultation and diagnosis systems for medical applications, contract negotiation, multi-party games, collaborative work places, electronic commerce environments such as on-line real- time auctions, and information dissemination of stock quotes. Many GKA protocols have been proposed in the literature. While some are only suitable for static groups others work in case of certain kinds of groups only (for instance groups with certain number of members or groups with the ability to listen to multiple broadcasts in a single round). While security flaws have been found in some others. This study presents here protocols which work in case of dynamic groups and are very generic in their assumptions about the group sizes and dynamics and with no known security flaws in them. Each protocol is defined in terms of the following operations: • Initial Key Agreement (IKA): This refers to the setup stage when a number of new users decide to derive a new group key. • Auxiliary Key Agreement (AKA): This refers to the group modification procedures (after a group is formed). It is essential that each of these operations lead to a change in the group key (to maintain key independence). These operations are: Join: One new member wishes to join an already established group. Delete: A member leaves (voluntarily or otherwise) a group. Partition: A group is divided into two (or more) smaller groups. It can also be viewed as a “Delete” of more than one member. Merge: Two (or more) groups get together to form a single group. It can also be viewed as a “Join” by more than one member.