Abstract
With the growth of multimedia services over wireless systems, the security of communication over cellular mobile phone networks, wireless access networks, and unreliable mobile ad-hoc networks is becoming a challenging issue. Secure communication implies data confidentiality and integrity, along with authentication, bringing with it commercial viability and protection of intellectual property. Innovatory key management protocols, specialized for multimedia exchange, are now under active development. Such protocols accelerate the key management process in order not to introduce additional latency, especially at start-up time, to what are real-time services. Whereas encryption algorithms are, for reasons of open scrutiny and validation, not a subject of confidentiality, a shared secret, the session key, must be confidential and that session key relies on the existence of a secret permanent key. If a server can successfully distribute keys to remote clients without interception, the greater becomes the chance of secure communication, even though no side channel and no physical exchange of keys are required. Therefore, the focus of this review is to highlight: the key generation mechanisms, interaction with associated key management protocols; and the strength of key-management protocols against security attacks. In addition, the paper reviews recent patents on multimedia key management and also examines counter-measures present in key-management protocols against known key and data attacks.
Keywords: Key management, mobile networks, multimedia, security protocols, m-commerce, MBMS, 3GPP, Cryptography, MACs, HMAC, PKI, IPTV, MCU, MANETs, MIKEY
12