An Efficient Edge-Based Authentication for Network Coding against Entropy Attacks

This paper proposes a new edge-based authentication scheme for network coding. Many authentication schemes for random linear network coding have been proposed against pollution attacks. However, random linear network coding is vulnerable to entropy attacks. An adversary can generate messages that are verified as correct messages by the authentication mechanism but obstruct the network coding. Random linear network coding is shown to be efficient in a random failure model, but not in an adversary model. This paper shows a simple solution to tolerate entropy attacks by changing random linear coding to deterministic message combining rule. For an example, this paper shows a modification of RIPPLE, an authentication scheme for random linear network coding. Lastly, we show that the total delay of modified RIPPLE can be reduced by an edge-based authentication. RIPPLE and many other authentication schemes are node-based, that is, verification keys and operations are defined for each node. We show that we can construct an edge-based scheme, that is, verification keys and operations are defined for each edge. We show that the edge-based authentication scheme is more efficient than the node-based schemes.