Key establishment for IGMP authentication in IP multicast

Abstract

The current work discusses an approach for delivering cryptographic keys to host-members in a multicast group and their respective multicast-routers running the IGMP protocol. Currently, no control message authentication exists in IGMP(v2) due the lack of mechanisms for key management at the subnet level for multicast groups. The proposed approach makes use of the existing group key management protocol deployed for host-members of a group to deliver the IGMP keying material to the host. It also makes use of the multicast distribution-tree to deliver the necessary keying material to the multicast-routers.