Decentralized and Scalable Group Key Management Algorithm for Large Ad-Hoc Groups

Recently there has been a noticeable growth of ad-hoc environments with peer-to-peer relations. Such environments decentralize the services in order to share their cost between their members. As a result a decentralized security scheme for the group members must be also provided. Group Key Management (GKM) deals with the responsibility of providing privacy and group authentication in group communications, but until now it is based either in centralized solutions, useless for peer-to-peer groups, or in contributory key schemes, that require a limited group size. We propose a GKM algorithm that it is both decentralized an scalable for large groups in ad-hoc environments.