Abstract
Key distribution is essential for providing secure communication between commercial and sensitive applications of wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs). It becomes more challenging when any of the intermediate sensor nodes is compromised by the adversaries as the messages carrying secure keys will be exposed and links will be unreliable. This paper presents a Disjoint Key Establishment Protocol (DKEP) that does not require transmitting keys across the nodes. In DKEP, each node is preloaded with one row and one column from a matrix. After the deployment, indices for row and column are exchanged between the two nodes and values at intersection of row and column index will be used to calculate the key on each node. DKEP is verified by performing formal analysis using Rubin Logic and validated using simulations in NS-2. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of DKEP compared to contemporary schemes in terms of reducing storage and communication cost and improving resilience against node compromise attacks. Moreover, the proposed scheme is implemented in a group-based mobile application scenario for secure message exchange.