Flexible broadcast authentication in resource-constrained systems: providing a tradeoff between communication and computational overheads

Abstract

A method for authenticating a message that is transmitted wirelessly. The method includes providing a set of private key values that define a private key and performing a key pair generation process that provides a key pair including the private key and a public key, where performing the key pair generation process includes applying one or more hash functions to the private key values, where a succeeding hash function provides a hash of a previous hash function. The scheme uses a signature generation process that generates a message digest by applying a hash function on the message to be signed and then separates the message digest into two parts including signing bits and selection bits and using the private key to sign the message. A receiver verifies the authenticity of the received message using the public key and a signature verification algorithm.