A Lightweight Multicast Authentication Mechanism for Small Scale IoT Applications

Security is very important for Internet of Things (IoTs). As a main communication mode, the security mechanism for multicast is not only the measure to ensure secured communications, but also the precondition for other security services. With the analysis of Nyberg's fast one-way accumulator and its security, we discover that it has the property of absorbency in addition to the one-way and quasi-communicative property that makes it very suitable for applications in which accumulated items are dynamic. In this paper, we revise the original Nyberg's fast one-way accumulator and construct a lightweight multicast authentication mechanism for small scale IoT applications. We analyze the security of the mechanism in detail. In addition, we evaluate seven performance aspects of the mechanism.