A Multicast Packet Authentication using Signature Amortization Scheme

The major principle of multicast communication is that each data packet sent from one source must reach all the receivers exactly as it originates from the source without any modification on the way. For information to be authentic there is the need to ensure that the information is from where they claim to come from and that security requirements are put in place. In multicast applications, when there are packet losses, the authenticity of the packet will not be verifiable by the receiver, making authentication impossible. In view of this, there is a need to develop an authentication scheme with lower communication cost and one that can be verifiable when packet loss is high. Thus, this research work developed a multicast authentication scheme that makes verification possible when there is packet loss and minimizes the size of the communication overhead. The research simulates a network environment using C sharp programming language and was tested with different messages to a number of receivers. The program was implemented in two phases: the sender’s end and the receiver’s end. The results show that amortization technique assists in reconstruction of the packet and make verification possible even when there are high losses of packets.