1949: Scalable Multicast Key Distribution.

The benefits of multicasting are becoming ever-more apparent, and its use much more widespread. This is evident from the growth of the MBONE [1]. Providing security services for multicast, such as traffic integrity, authentication, and confidentiality, is particularly problematic since it requires securely distributing a group (session) key to each of a group's receivers. Traditionally, the key distribution function has been assigned to a central network entity, or Key Distribution Centre (KDC), but this method does not scale for wide-area multicasting, where group members may be widely-distributed across the internetwork, and a wide-area group may be densely populated.