Title: Secure key exchange protocol using graph and trusted third party

Authors: Maroti Deshmukh; Arjun Singh Rawat

Addresses: National Institute of Technology, Uttarakhand, India ' National Institute of Technology, Uttarakhand, India

Abstract: The exchange of cryptographic keys poses a challenge due to the need for secure communication channels. This paper presents an algorithm that employs a random complete graph, a trusted third party, and a circuit to ensure secure key transmission. The trusted third party generates a graph and uses a circuit (a path from sender to receiver) to transmit the key alongside the message. This process enhances security by making key tracing difficult. The proposed scheme generates a common session key through a graph permutation, outperforming existing schemes in terms of key size. It accommodates varying key sizes, making it adaptable to different scenarios. Moreover, the approach minimises computation and communication overhead by utilising a limited number of steps, graph weights, permutations, and multiplications, while involving a trusted third party.

Keywords: key exchange protocol; asymmetric key cryptography; complete graph; key distribution; trusted third party; TTP.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCNDS.2024.139329

International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, 2024 Vol.30 No.4, pp.393 - 412

Received: 16 Feb 2023
Accepted: 25 Apr 2023
Published online: 01 Jul 2024 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article