A Dynamic i-key Encryption Protocol for Wireless Networks

The fast growth of wireless networking has made data security an essential issue. Encryption mechanisms relying on a static key structure, such as WEP (802.11) and TKIP (802.1x), are vulnerable to key cracking via the capture of wireless packets. Although new standards have been developed to fill this gap, a stable security protocol has been lacking. In this paper, we present a lightweight and solid i-key encryption protocol to enhance the security of wireless communication. This dynamic re-keying mechanism allows only valid clients with the unique, secret i-key to decrypt the ciphertext and reveal the message, thus protecting sensitive data from access by unauthorized recipients. In addition, test results indicate that the i-key protocol can perform efficiently in different wireless environments.