International Association
for Cryptologic Research

This paper describes HIMMO, an identity-based pairwise symmetric key establishment method. The acronym \"HIMMO\" is derived from two interpolation problems that are essential for the

security of the scheme: the HI problem, which is related to the

well-known noisy interpolation problem, and the apparently novel MMO problem, presented at ISSAC\'14.

HIMMO is non-interactive: nodes in a network can directly generate a common key without exchanging messages. Each node in the network has an identifier, and a trusted third pay (TTP) provides it with secret keying material---linked to the node identifier---in a secure way.

A node that wishes to communicate with another node uses its own secret keying material and the identity of the other node to generate a common pairwise key.

HIMMO allows for efficient operation with respect to both the amount of stored keying material and the key computation time, which is especially relevant for resource-constrained devices.

It has similar operational characteristics as previous ID-based symmetric key establishment methods, but has superior resistance against attacks in which multiple colluding or compromised nodes co-operate to obtain information on keys between other non-colluding or non-compromised nodes.