Reinforcement of VoIP security with multipath routing and secret sharing scheme

A technique to enhance the security of vocal communication over an open network is proposed in this paper. This technique combines a secret sharing scheme and a multipath routing technique on network communication. The secret sharing scheme, originally proposed to convey information securely from one person to another, divides original information into sets of partial data. Each set of partial data is designated as shared data. In principle, nobody can obtain any information of the original from a subset of the shared data. Only a person who collects all shared data can reconstruct the original information. Furthermore, a multipath routing technique, by which a single set of data is transferred from one host to another through multiple network paths, was developed originally for load sharing and high reliability. The proposed method therefore divides speech data using the secret sharing scheme and transfers the shared data using the multipath routing technique to realize secure voice communication over the network. Advantages of the method are that it requires no secret key, which plays an essential role in IPsec, and moreover, it can be used in conjunction with IPsec to reinforce the security of VoIP.