Efficient and Secure Keyed Hash Function Scheme Based on RC4 Stream Cipher

High number of rounds is needed for the existing message authentication algorithms, such as keyed hash functions like Hash-based Message Authentication Code (HMAC) or block cipher based functions like Cipher-based Message Authentication Code (CMAC) and Galois Message Authentication Code (GMAC). Moreover, the employed compression functions consist of several operations to achieve two main properties: confusion and diffusion. This large number of rounds introduces high overhead for resource-limited systems like Internet of Things (IoT) or delay-sensitive systems that have real-time requirements like Intelligent Transparent Systems. In this paper, a new lightweight message authentication algorithm is proposed to reduce the number of rounds to one. The proposed compression function is based on the RC4 stream cipher to reduce the required overhead in terms of latency and resources. Finally, the security and performance analysis shows that the proposed keyed hash function is resistant towards existing security attacks with low resources overhead.