Adaptive secure multicast in wireless networks

Secure multicast is one of the majority services in the near future. The frameworks for IP multicast cannot be directly applied in wireless networks. To address the natural issues of wireless multicast and enhance the efficiency, an adaptive secure multicast framework based on a new primitive called multi-recipient generalized signcryption and a multi-recipient generalized signcryption scheme based on the gap Diffie-Hellman problem (MGSC-GDH) are proposed. The key technologies to construct a high-performance adaptive scheme including identification function, randomness reusing are investigated. The framework provides separate or joint encryption and signature functions according to users' identities and requirements transparently, and has the ability to aggregate multiple unicast besides the common multicast service. Therefore, overheads are reduced sharply for multiple functions which are provided with a single primitive. By the precise reduction, the gap-bridge between the security of a base scheme and the corresponding multi-recipient generalized signcryption scheme is built, which is a direct measure to quantify the security. Analysis shows that MGSC-GDH is a semantic secure multi-recipient generalized signcryption scheme and more efficient than other similar schemes in computational and communicational aspects. It is suitable for dynamic environment for rekeying is avoided when membership changes. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.