Resilience analysis of key update strategies for resource-constrained networks

Severe resource limitations in certain types of networks lead to various open issues in security. Since such networks usually operate in unattended or hostile environments, revoking the cryptographic keys and establishing (also distributing) new keys - which we refer to as key update - is a critical security issue. In this paper, we investigate the behaviour of different key update strategies under deviant network conditions. We consider resource-critical networks that employ symmetric cryptography and rely on (shared) network keys. We provide a methodology for quantitative security and performance analysis, and present a case study covering six different key update strategies.