A cryptographic suite for underwater cooperative applications

Abstract

An underwater acoustic scenario raises many problems in terms of security because of the limited bandwidth provided by the underwater medium. In this paper we face with the problem of secure cooperation among underwater acoustic vehicles. We propose a cryptographic suite able to reduce at the minimum the message overhead added by security. The cryptographic suite provides vehicles authentication, confidentiality and integrity of messages and key management. A prototype has been implemented and preliminary performance evaluation tests are shown.