Secure Internet communication may be made easier by invention

Imagine video-chatting with your friend or crush while, unbeknownst to you, a nosy cyber-stalker or computer-savvy, overprotective parent is eavesdropping on your conversation.

New award-winning technology created by a university-professor-led engineering team could ensure your conversations, and other sensitive information, remain safe.

Engineering professor John Baras and two electronic engineers from the Army Research Laboratory, Paul Yu and Brian Sadler, have developed a method where secret keys (or passwords) needed to communicate sensitive information can be updated more efficiently and securely.

According to Yu, the technology was developed over a year and a half with collaboration between the university and the Army. The key exchange method was the information science category winner at the Invention of the Year Awards hosted by the university's Office of Technology Commercialization last week.

The method, which has a patent application pending, allows for more frequent key updates, which increase the protection of sensitive information. It could be used to help secure video-chat communications, to ensure attackers cannot tune into a Netflix video stream for free or to guarantee the secrecy of battlefield communication.

"In the Army, we're always very concerned with secure battlefield communication," Yu said. "Communication frequency bands are constantly being switched to prevent adversaries from listening or intercepting data. Our method would enable us to quickly and secretly switch frequencies."

Secret keys are used in secure communications or transactions between parties, such as banks, businesses or the government, when private information needs to be communicated.

Problems arise when keys need to be updated and new key sequences must be generated in order to minimize the risk of information's confidentiality being compromised. Currently, when one or more of the parties that share encrypted information choose to change a key, some of the parties are forced to use an expensive and time-consuming amount of computing resources.

Another current solution for secret key exchanges would be for the two parties to use a trusted third party to pass along the information, but no third-party communication is risk-free, and third parties are sometimes unavailable.

Baras, Yu and Sadlers' technology solves these problems by having both parties agree to rules beforehand that limit the possible key updates.

By greatly narrowing the possible keys updates both parties can choose from, far less computing is required to generate a new key, and there is a very low probability of a third-party breach in confidentiality. With secret, currently impenetrable rules dictating what the next keys could be, computers can handle more secure key sequences.

Yu said finding a way to minimize the computing resources needed for key exchanges has become important as computer systems continue to get smaller.

"Smaller and smaller computer modules continue to emerge: We saw computers, laptops, iPhones and devices that are basically sensors with batteries," Yu said. "Smaller devices have more energy constraints, and the old methods need too much computing for these smaller systems."

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