Energy efficient authentication strategies for network coding

Abstract

SUMMARY Recent advances in information theory and networking, e.g. aggregation, network coding or rateless codes, have significantly modified data dissemination in wireless networks. These new paradigms create new threats for security such as pollution attacks and denial of services (DoS). These attacks exploit the difficulty to authenticate data in such contexts. The particular case of xor network coding is considered herein. We investigate different strategies based on message authentication codes algorithms (MACs) to thwart these attacks. Yet, classical MAC designs are not compatible with the linear combination of network coding. Fortunately, MACs based on universal hash functions (UHFs) match nicely the needs of network coding: some of these functions are linear h(x1⊕x2) = h(x1)⊕h(x2). To demonstrate their efficiency, we consider the case of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Although these functions can drastically reduce the energy consumption of authentication (up to 68% gain over the classical designs is observed), they increase the threat of DoS. Indeed, an adversary can disrupt all communications by polluting few messages. To overcome this problem, a group testing algorithm is introduced for authentication resulting in a complexity linear in the number of attacks. The energy consumption is analyzed for cross‐point and butterfly network topologies with respect to the possible attack scenarios. The results highlight the trade‐offs between energy efficiency, authentication and the effective throughput for the different MAC modes. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An Efficient Content Delivery Infrastructure Leveraging the Public Transportation Network

“…It is possible to mitigate pollution attacks with advanced message authentication strategies [4] but at the cost of complex cryptographic operations. Thus, installing a secure network coding AP is even more expensive than solely installing a network coding AP.…”

“…It spreads the pollution by combining legitimate messages with polluted ones and therefore limiting the recovery probability of legitimate messages [10]. It is possible to mitigate pollution attacks with advanced message authentication strategies but at the cost of complex cryptographic operations [4] requiring sophisticated and more expensive hardware.…”

Advances in network and system security

“…In the fourth paper, ‘Energy efficient authentication strategies for network coding’ , Apavatjrut et al investigate different strategies based on message authentication codes algorithms to deal with the attacks against network coding schemes. In wireless sensor networks, the node resources are limited in energy and in computational power.…”