Patent ID: 8588411

Claim:
A method for secure communications from a first node (N 1 ) to a second node (N 2 ) in a network, the first node having a processing element and comprising a first node keying material (KM (ID1) ), the second node having a processing element and comprising a second node keying material (KM (ID2) ), wherein the keying materials of the first and second nodes each comprise a plurality of keying root shares formed by multiple keying root share segments, the method comprising, for the first node, using the processing element of the first node to execute the following steps: a) determining an identifier (ID 2 ) of the second node (N 2 ), b) determining the composition of the keying material of the second node (KM (ID2) ), this determination comprising the selection of each i th keying root share segment of the second node keying material from a predistributed keying material set, such set depending at least on i and on the second node's identifier, c) comparing the first node keying material (KM (ID1) ) and the second node keying material (KM (ID2) ), for identifying the common keying root share segments, wherein an i th common keying root share segment is determined by retrieving the keying root share segment in common between a set comprising the i th keying root share segments generated as elements of an i th Finite Projective Plane of each keying root share of the second node keying material and a set comprising the i th keying root share segments generated as elements of an i th Finite Projective Plane of each keying root share of the first node keying material, d) computing a shared key (K) between the first node (N 1 ) and the second node (N 2 ), based on at least one of the identified common keying root share segments, the identifier of the second node (ID 2 ) and the segment identifier i.