A Hierarchical Lightweight Authentication Scheme Based on Merkle Tree and Hash Chain

doi:10.3969/j.issn.1671-1122.2024.05.005

Abstract

Abstract:

Distributed systems such as cloud computing and the Internet of Things are widely used in various critical application domains, and their security issues are receiving increasing attention. Due to the complex deployment environment, the characteristics such as decentralization, heterogeneity, and dynamics, the security guarantee of distributed systems faces severe challenges. Traditional authentication schemes usually have the limitations of high computational cost, complex certificate management, and untimely member dynamic updates, which cannot meet the requirements of large-scale distributed systems. In this paper, aiming at the typical application scenarios where a large number of clients interact with application servers, a hierarchical lightweight authentication scheme based on Merkle tree and hash chain was proposed. In this scheme, there were several neighborhoods in the system, each client belongs to a neighborhood, and an authentication proxy node was set in each neighborhood to manage the clients in the neighborhood and report authentication information to the application server. The scheme adopted both Merkle tree and hash chain to realize identity authentication for the client, one-time pad encryption, and message authentication, and used efficient operations of hash and XOR to achieve lower computational costs. Security analysis and performance analysis show that the scheme has comprehensive security and better performance.

Key words: Merkle tree, hash chain, one-time pad, authentication

CLC Number:

TP309

SHEN Zhuowei, WANG Renbo, SUN Xianjun. A Hierarchical Lightweight Authentication Scheme Based on Merkle Tree and Hash Chain[J]. Netinfo Security, 2024, 24(5): 709-718.

Figures/Tables 15

References 18

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ID	SK	Root Value	Set of Client(PID_l, Node_l_,_last, count_l)
认证代理1	K₁	root₁	NULL
认证代理2	K₂	root₂	NULL
认证代理3	K₃	root₃	NULL
…	…	…	…

	文献[3]方案	文献[7]方案	文献[14]方案	本文方案
抗伪造攻击	√	√	√	√
抗中间人攻击	√	√	√	√
抗重放攻击	N/A	N/A	√	√
机密性	√	√	√	√
完整性	N/A	N/A	√	√
匿名性	√	√	×	√
可撤销	×	√	√	√

客户端存储节点数	平均计算开销/ms	存储开销/KB
1	0.36000	0.03
100	0.00360	3.00
110	0.00144	3.44

符号	定义	开销/ms
T_pa	双线性配对运算	10.00257
T_Gm	椭圆曲线点乘运算	3.73970
T_Ga	椭圆曲线点加运算	0.00109
T_AES-enc	AES-256加密运算	0.00083
T_AES-dec	AES-256解密运算	0.00119
T_H	SHA-256哈希运算	0.00072
T_XOR	位异或运算	0.00014

	身份认证（密钥协商）		消息认证
	客户端	服务器	客户端	服务器
文献[3]方案	4T_Gm+T_Ga+ 5T_H+T_AES-enc	4T_Gm+T_Ga+5T_H+ T_AES-dec+2T_bp	T_AES-enc+T_H	T_AES-dec+T_H
文献[7] 方案	T_Gm+T_Ga+T_AES-enc+ T_AES-dec+T_H	T_Gm+T_Ga+T_AES-enc+ T_AES-dec+T_H	T_AES-enc+T_H	T_AES-dec+T_H
文献[14]方案	129T_AES-enc+ 255T_H	T_AES-dec+T_H	T_XOR	T_AES-dec+ T_XOR+7T_H
本文方案	/	T_AES-dec+7T_H	T_XOR+3T_H	T_XOR+3T_H