Addressing Single Point of Failure in Group Communication of Constrained Environments

Group communication with multicast messaging in a constrained environment (e.g., the Internet of Things, Adhoc Networks) is widely deployed in many applications. In most of deployed architecture, a central server (e.g., a group controller, group manager) is given the responsibility of managing keys and secure messaging of different communicating parties of the system, which creates a serious risk of the system’s single point of failure. If this central server is compromised, it exposes the entire group key, compromises the whole network architecture. To address this vulnerability, we present a solution in the form of a distributed group key generator algorithm. The proposed algorithm distributes the responsibility of generating and managing group keys among multiple entities or servers. The distributed group key generator algorithm incorporates a specific threshold mechanism which makes sure that in the process of key regeneration, atleast that threshold number of entities are required. By doing this, the possibility of a single point of failure is decreased, and the whole system’s security is improved.