A lightweight dynamic multicast authentication scheme

Multicast is a very common communication mode in wireless networks. A security mechanism for multicast is not only the measure to ensure secure communications but also the precondition for other security services. Based on the analysis of Nyberg's fast one-way accumulator and its security, we discover that it has property of absorbency besides the one-way and quasi-communicative properties, which makes it very suitable for applications with variable accumulated items. In this paper, a lightweight dynamic multicast authentication algorithm for small-scale group-based applications is constructed by improving the original Nyberg's fast one-way accumulator. In addition, the security of the algorithm is analyzed in detail and the performance is evaluated in four aspects.