Hybrid and adaptive hash-chaining scheme for data-streaming source authentication

Abstract

Multicast source authentication is an important component in the multicast security framework. This security service must take into consideration the scalability and the efficiency of the underlying cryptographic schemes and mechanisms, because multicast groups can be very large and the exchanged data is likely to be important in volume (streaming). Besides, multicast source authentication must be robust enough against packet loss because most of multicast multimedia applications do not use reliable packet delivery. In this paper, we propose an adaptive and efficient source authentication protocol which tolerates packet loss and guarantees non-repudiation in media-streaming. This protocol relies on a new hybrid hash-chaining scheme. We have simulated our protocol using NS-2, and the simulation results show that the protocol has remarkable features and efficiency compared to other recent source authentication protocols. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.