An efficient dynamic-identity based signature scheme for secure network coding

The network coding based applications are vulnerable to possible malicious pollution attacks. Signature schemes have been well-recognized as the most effective approach to address this security issue. However, existing homomorphic signature schemes for network coding either incur high transmission/computation overhead, or are vulnerable to random forgery attacks. In this paper, we propose a novel dynamic-identity based signature scheme for network coding by signing linear vector subspaces. The scheme can rapidly detect/drop the packets that are generated from pollution attacks, and efficiently thwart random forgery attack. By employing fast packet-based and generation-based batch verification approaches, a forwarding node can verify multiple received packets synchronously with dramatically reduced total verification cost. In addition, the proposed scheme provides one-way identity authentication without requiring any extra secure channels or separate certificates, so that the transmission cost can be significantly reduced. Simulation results demonstrate the practicality and efficiency of the proposed schemes. 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.