Secret key establishment based on parameters of the communication channel is a highly attractive option for many applications that operate in a dynamic mobile environment with peer-to-peer association. On the other hand, high usability and dynamic key management are still very difficult to achieve for wireless devices which have to operate under strict resource constraints. In fact, most previously reported key generation methods cannot operate in such environment. In this work, we present a new system architecture which is suitable also for resource-constrained platforms. Our design strongly focuses on security, rather than a robust key generation rate, as well as on low complexity and efficiency. Our approach has the potential to dramatically reduce the cost of securing small embedded devices for the Internet of Things, and hence make mass production and deployment viable.
The use of reciprocal and random properties of wireless channels for the generation of secret keys is a highly attractive option for many applications that operate in a mobile environment. In recent years, several practice-oriented protocols have been proposed, but unfortunately without a sufficient and consistent security analysis and without a fair comparison between each other. This can be attributed to the fact that until now neither a common evaluation basis, nor a security metric in an on-line scenario (e.g., with changing channel properties) was proposed. We attempt to close this gap by presenting test vectors based on a large measurement campaign, an extensive comparative evaluation framework (including ten protocols as well as new on-line entropy estimators), and a rigorous experimental security analysis. Further, we answer for the first time a variety of security and performance related questions about the behavior of 10 channelbased key establishment schemes from the literature.
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