NIS03-3: RC4-based Security in Ethernet Passive Optical Networks

This paper identifies the security vulnerabilities in ethernet passive optical networks (EPONs), and proposes a RC4-based encryption and a key distribution scheme based on the Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithm. The proposed method is expected to provide the benefits of a streaming cipher while at the same time using securely shared secret keys among the OLT and each ONU.