Public Key Management Framework for Two-tier Super Peer Architecture

Many Internet applications use public key infrastructure (PKI) to enable the secure transaction of confidential messages. However, the use of PKI is not consistent with the ideas of peer-to-peer networks. In this paper, we propose public key management framework to distribute public key safely without PKI infrastructure for two-tier super peer architecture. In this framework, each peer self-generates and distributes public/private key pairs. In general case, this kind of mechanism is vulnerable to man-in-the- middle attack during the public key distribution process. But the proposed mechanism can easily avoid this kind of attack.