A coalition key-evolving signature scheme towards intrusion resilient mobile networks for industrial applications

Mobile networks are more vulnerable to intrusion than fixed wired networks because the connection path is dynamically forming during communication. To protect the dynamically forming mobile networks from intrusion, a coalition key-evolving scheme is proposed in this paper. The proposed scheme treats the 3 entities in a dynamic path as foreign agents (FA), home agents (HA) and mobile agents (MA) as a coalition formed by each individual agent. Each agent has a pair of private and public keys; the private key is evolving with time; and the public key is signed by a certificate authority (CA). All the private keys of the 3 agents of the coalition are needed to sign a signature. And all the messages are signed and verified. The signature is verified against a public key that is the product of public keys of all the agents that is readily generated when a new dynamic path is formed. This helps prevent adversary from impersonating using fake FA or MA. Furthermore, the key-evolving scheme prevents an adversary from forging past signatures under any circumstances. In order to forge future signatures, an adversary must compromise all MA, FA and HA simultaneously due to proactive refresh scheme. An interactive proactive synchronization scheme among the agents is proposed when a new dynamic path is formed or private keys evolve to new states. Thus the loss of a mobile device or its information will have minimal information damage.