Homomorphic MACs: MAC-Based Integrity for Network Coding
Authors: S. Agrawal and D. Boneh
Abstract:
Network coding has been shown to improve the capacity and robustness
in networks. However, since intermediate nodes modify packets
en-route, integrity of data cannot be checked using traditional MACs
and checksums. In addition, network coded systems are vulnerable to
pollution attacks where a single malicious node can flood the network
with bad packets and prevent the receiver from decoding the packets
correctly. Signature schemes have been proposed to thwart such
attacks, but they tend to be too slow for online per-packet integrity.
Here we propose a homomorphic MAC which allows checking the integrity
of network coded data. Our homomorphic MAC is designed as a drop-in replacement for traditional
MACs (such as HMAC) in systems using network coding.
Reference:
In proceedings of ACNS 2009, LNCS 5536, pp. 292-305
Full paper: pdf