Efficient authentication for mobile and pervasive computing

Abstract

With today's technology, many applications rely on the existence of small devices that can exchange information and form communication networks. In a significant portion of such applications, the confidentiality and integrity of the communicated messages are of particular interest. In this work, we propose a novel technique for authenticating short encrypted messages that is more efficient than any message authentication code in the literature. By taking advantage of the fact that the message to be authenticated must also be encrypted, we propose a computationally secure authentication code that is as efficient as an unconditionally secure authentication, without the need for impractically long keys. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.