An RC4-Based Lightweight Security Protocol for Resource-constrained Communications

In this paper, we present a simple, lightweight, but robust security protocol for resource-constrained communications. This protocol is based on the backward property of RC4 stream cipher and achieves data confidentiality, data authentication, data integrity, and data freshness with low overhead and simple operations. Furthermore, an RC4-based hash function for the generation of message authentication code (MAC) is presented. The proposed protocol is an ideal solution for resource-constrained environments where the communication nodes have limited power resources and computational capabilities, and can be widely used in the applications of one-to-one communications as well as broadcasting and multicasting.