On the design of secure group-oriented communication channels in Internet environments

This paper presents efficient protocols for establishing secure group-oriented communication channels in Internet environments based on a geometric method. Since the data encryption/decryption requires a common secret session key between two communicating parties, finding an efficient way to distribute the group-oriented secret session key in Internet environments has become a nontrivial task. We assume that the Internet environments consist of many hosts, and each host has many users attached to it. The scheme proposed in this paper incorporates the public-key distribution and the trigonometry concepts as the basic theory. Since this scheme does not need any trusted key distribution center to distribute the common secret session key between two groups, it is quite suitable to be used in Internet environments so that the key distribution is convenient, time-saving and reparable. Furthermore, an authentication protocol is also proposed. Such a protocol can not only identify both the sender and the receiver of a group correctly but also make sure that the transmitted message reaches its destination safely.