Multi-User Security for Multicast Communications in Wireless Networks

Speaker :       Yan SUN
                Electrical and Computer Engineering
                University of Maryland

Title:          "Multi-User Security for Multicast Communications in
                 Wireless Networks"

Date:           Monday, 8 March 2004

Time:           2:30 pm - 3:30 pm

Venue:          Room 2306 (Phase I, via lift nos. 17/18)
                HKUST

ABSTRACT:

Many applications that will occur on the ubiquitous networks of the future
will involve group-oriented scenarios. Users will interact with each other
through such applications as video conferences, interactive television,
and communal gaming. In order to have efficient group communications,
whether server-oriented or peer-based, multicast communication techniques
should be used.  The adaptation of multicast into commercial applications
requires security functionalities, such as authentication,
non-repudiation, and access control. Of these, access control is paramount
as it is the first line of defense needed to protect the value of
application data.

Access control for group communications is addressed by multicast key
management techniques that concern key establishment/updating with dynamic
group membership. However, the traditional literature for group key
management only provides generic constructions of the security structure.
In this talk, we will first introduce network-specific and
application-specific design for key management schemes that considers the
varying security and resource requirements of different applications,
users, and networks. The proposed design can improve the scalability of
key management.

The original design goal of key management scheme is to achieve access
control such that non-group members cannot access the multicast content.
We discover, however, key management can disclose the information about
the dynamics of the group membership, such as the group size and the
number of join and departure users, to both inside and outside attackers.
This is a threat to applications with confidential group membership
information. The second part of this talk will address the
attack/anti-attack strategies for stealing/protecting group dynamic
information in the existing key management schemes.



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Biography:

Yan Sun received her B.S. degree from Beijing University, Beijing, China,
in 1998.  She is expecting to get the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and
Computer Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, in June
2004. Ms.  Sun received the Graduate School Fellowship at the University
of Maryland from 1998 to 1999, and the Excellent Graduate Award of Beijing
University in 1998.  Her research interests include network security,
wireless communications and networking, and multimedia signal processing.
She is a member of the IEEE Signal Processing and Communication Societies.