Secure Wireless Distribution of Cryptographic Keys Phase II

The goal of this SBIR is to develop a capability for securely transmitting cryptographic keys over wireless networking environments. The lack of perimeter defenses in wireless networks demands that all transmitters/receivers possess cryptographic devices to protect sensitive data. With the increasing use of wireless technologies, this places unrealistic management and distribution requirements on the security personnel. Additionally, as security breaches are detected, it is paramount that new cryptographic keys be rapidly transmitted to the remaining trusted wireless participants. New solutions are needed that securely distribute cryptographic keys over wireless networks to large groups of devices with minimal human intervention. These solutions must be suitable for both emerging and legacy cryptographic devices. They must also be agile enough to allow rekeying to occur at anytime and anywhere. This SBIR is developing a new Wireless Rekeying Device and new secure group key distribution algorithm capable of rekeying thousands of devices simultaneously. Our technology combines emerging low-cost commercial components with an innovative command-hierarchical key-graph algorithm to perform over-the-air group rekeying of legacy cryptographic devices. Our Phase I SBIR analysis has shown that this architecture and algorithm combination is secure, highly scalable, supports command delegation, and is computationally/memory/network efficient.