Efficient Modified Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman Algorithm for VoIP Networks

Subashri Thangavelu¹ and Vaidehi Vijaykumar²

¹Department of Electronics Engineering, Anna University, India

²AU-KBC Research Centre, Anna University, India

Abstract: Security in Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) network has turned to be the most challenging issue in recent years. VoIP packets are easy to eavesdrop on by hackers due to the use of Diffie-Hellman (DH) algorithm for single common key exchange between two end-users. As a result the confidentiality of voice data turns to be a challenging issue. There is a need for strong key management algorithm to secure voice data from all kinds of attacks. In this paper, an efficient Modified Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (MECDH) using Split Scalar Multiplication (SSM) algorithm is proposed, which secures voice data from Man-in-the Middle (MITM) attack by dynamically generating the shared key. Further, in order to speed up the scalar multiplication used in traditional Elliptic Curve Diffie Hellman (ECDH) algorithm, the SSM technique is adopted in the proposed MECDH algorithm. The performance of the proposed MECDH algorithm is compared with the traditional ECDH and validated in Java platform. From the results obtained, it is observed that the computation time taken by the proposed MECDH algorithm is 89% lesser than the traditional ECDH algorithm and 11% lesser than the key changing ECDH. Also, high security level is achieved with the proposed idea of using dynamic keys instead of single common shared secret key.

Received March 5, 2013; accepted September 13, 2014