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Vol: 59(73) No: 2 / December 2014 

Attacks against Group Key Transfer Protocols based on Secret Sharing
Ruxandra F. Olimid
Department of Computer Science, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania, e-mail: ruxandra.olimid@fmi.unibuc.ro


Keywords: Group Key Transfer, Secret Sharing, Attack

Abstract
Securing group applications usually requires a pre-established private group key, which can result as the output of a Group Key Transfer protocol (GKT). Some of the recent GKT protocols lack a security analysis and hence are susceptible to simple attacks. We analyze three such protocols and remark vulnerabilities that allow an adversary to make group members accept distinct group keys or even gain no key at all. The attacks remain hidden (until the end of the protocol execution), which prevents players to immediately ask for re-execution.

References
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