Rubik's cube based private key management in wireless networks

Abstract

Key management using public key cryptography is less preferable due to several limitations like relatively high computation cost, encryption of preferably short messages, complex encryption-decryption algorithms etc. So we resort to private key management technique. In order to exchange messages between nodes in a Wireless Network, secret shared cryptographic keys must be established between the nodes of the network. Key management is a challenging task in wireless networks as the hostile environment of wireless networks makes it more prone to attacks. In order to ensure safe key management, dynamic generation of keys must occur. Hence the need of this study. This paper proposes a completely novel method for key generation using the concept which is slightly based on design of the Rubik's cube. As the complexity to solve the cube is quite high, it is almost impossible for an outsider to obtain the key that is shared among nodes. Also, a node Hop Count check is provided, which reduces the possibility of procurement of the keys on node capture. The main advantage of the method suggested in this paper is that keys are not exchanged between the nodes over the network, which reduces the possibility of key capture to a great extent.