Constructing general dynamic group key distribution schemes with decentralized user join

Abstract

In a dynamic group key distribution scheme, members of a group themselves generate private common keys with the help of a group controller in an initialization phase. The system must enable the revocation and the addition of members to the group in the successive periods of time. If the addition of new members can also be performed by the existing members themselves, then the scheme is said to have decentralized user join. In this work we construct a general family of dynamic group key distribution schemes with decentralized user join by using linear secret sharing schemes as a tool. This allows to obtain new schemes with more flexible characteristics than the previous threshold-based constructions. © 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.