RLH: receiver driven layered hash-chaining for multicast data origin authentication

Securing the multicast communication model is a strategic requirement for effective deployment of large scale business multi-party applications (TV over Internet, Video-on-Demand (VoD), video-conferencing, interactive group games, .). One of the main issues in securing multicast communication is the authentication service; a keystone of every secure architecture. Even though several authentication mechanisms have existed so far, data origin authentication in multi-party communications remains a challenging problem in terms of scalability, efficiency and performance. In this paper, we propose an efficient multicast data origin authentication protocol based on a novel layered hash-chaining scheme. Our protocol tolerates packet loss and guarantees non-repudiation of media-streaming origin. Furthermore, our protocol allows receivers to make the decision regarding the authentication information redundancy degree depending on the quality of reception in term of packet loss ratio. This novel technique allows to save bandwidth since the packet loss distribution over a large scale network is likely to be not uniform. 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 data origin authentication protocols. q 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.