Security and Communication Networks
Volume 2018 (2018), Article ID 9641273, 6 pages
https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/9641273

Research Article

A Homomorphic Network Coding Signature Scheme for Multiple Sources and its Application in IoT

Tong Li,¹ Wenbin Chen,¹ Yi Tang,² and Hongyang Yan³

¹School of Computer Science, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, China
²School of Mathematics and Information Science, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, China
³College of Computer and Control Engineering, Nankai University, Tianjin, China

Correspondence should be addressed to Yi Tang; ytang.bjs@139.com

Received 13 January 2018; Revised 21 March 2018; Accepted 15 April 2018; Published 14 June 2018

Academic Editor: Ilsun You

Copyright © 2018 Tong Li et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract.

As a method for increasing throughput and improving reliability of routing, network coding has been widely used in decentralized IoT systems. When files are shared in the system, network coding signature techniques can help authenticate whether a modified packet in files is injected or not. However, in an IoT system, there are often multiple source devices each of which has its own authentication key, where existing single-source network coding signature schemes cannot work. In this paper, we study the problem of designing secure network coding signatures in the network with multiple sources and propose the multisource homomorphic network coding signature. We also give construction and prove its security.

1. Introduction

With the rapid development of Internet and communication technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT) has emerged as a leading technology that brings convenience to our daily lives. More and more smart terminals are connected on the Internet, and files, logs, and other real-time contents are shared among these terminals all the times. According to a report of International Data Corporation (IDC), there will be nearly 28 billion installed IoT devices by 2020.

Considering the scale of IoT’s expansion, it is very essential to increase its throughput in such a huge decentralized network. When a source device transmits a file to a set of target receivers, an effective way is to split the file into data packets and send them to its neighbouring nodes by using the network coding technique. In the network coding, each intermediate node linearly combines packets rather than simply storing and forwarding the incoming packets. In other words, an intermediate node that receives a set of packets from its incoming links can modify them and send the modifications to other nodes through its outgoing edges. In some applications, either an ad hoc node or an intermediate device can play a role of an intermediate node. This linear network coding allows receivers to recover the original information with high probability if they collect sufficiently many correct packets. Thus, the throughput for sharing real-time contents in IoT is increased.

However, security is one of the most important requirement of IoT systems, and IoT devices often interact with third-party applications. Without authenticate mechanisms, the inherent flaw of linear network coding would be disturbed by invalid packets injected by third-party applications. Intermediate nodes can later use the invalid incoming vectors in its output, which means that the errors are propagated subsequently and data receivers will not obtain the original information. As a result, adversaries could easily initiate a Denial of Service (DoS) attack to prevent the original file from being recovered. The main idea to mitigate attacks is to provide a way to authenticate valid packets, and Catalano et al. [1] proposed an efficient network coding signature scheme as a solution of the authentication problem. By verifying a modified signature of the corresponding modified packet, any device can easily know whether this packet is valid.

Unfortunately, in an IoT system, origin data are usually collected from various sources (e.g., sensors) each of which could have its own signature for authentication. It is required that any (intermediate) receiver can perform the combination of incoming packets which are signed by different keys. As a drawback, trivially adopting the existing network coding has to generate signatures are linear in the number of the sources, and thus the signatures cannot be directly combined when packets are modified. Motivated by this problem, in this paper, we propose a multisource linearly homomorphic network coding signature scheme. The proposed scheme is extended from our previous work [2] and enables a multilayers routing network rather than a 3-layer one, which can be used to implement authentication for transmitting files in the IoT system.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents some related works. Section 3 overviews some definitions. In Section 4, we describe our multisource linearly homomorphic network coding signature scheme. Section 5 analyzes the correctness and security of the proposed scheme. In Section 6 we summarize the paper.

2. Related Works

In the traditional network routing, every node simply receives packets and forwards them to neighbour nodes. A routing method called network coding [3, 4] is proposed and developed for increasing throughput in the network. In the network coding, intermediate nodes combine received data packets and transit them and the data receiver still obtains the original data. This technique can be used in IoT applications and cloud systems for broadcast and transmission [5–19].

In the single-source scenario, some schemes were proposed to make sure that there is always a recipient bound to the corresponding for authentication. M. Krohn et al. introduced the homomorphic hash function [20, 21] and extended it to network coding. The linearly homomorphic signature is a more effective authentication for the network coding. Reference [22] proposed the first linearly homomorphic signature scheme. Reference [23–25] found some security flaw and errors, and Yu et al. [26] gave a construction by combining the RSA-based signature with the homomorphic hash function. Reference [27, 28] designed signature schemes for peer-to-peer networks and distributed contents respectively. Reference [29, 30] proposed homomorphic network coding signature schemes based on the bilinear mapping and RSA assumption respectively. In [31], Boneh et al. designed a signature scheme with the property of signing unlimited number of messages. Based on the complexity of lattice problems, [32] introduced the -SIS problem and constructed a signature scheme over binary fields. For a fine-grain access control, [33, 34] proposed schemes based on the identity-based signature. The schemes above are proven secure in the random oracle model. In the standard model, some homomorphic network coding signature schemes were proposed [1, 34–36]. The security of the scheme in [35] is based on the discrete logarithm assumption. Independent of these works, [37] proposed a method that transforms standard signature schemes to linearly homomorphic signatures in the standard model.

However, in a multisource case which is the common scenario in the IoT system, there is still no linearly homomorphic network coding signature scheme. Our goal is to design a multisource linearly homomorphic network coding signature scheme.

3. Preliminaries

Then, we show some definitions of the linearly homomorphic network coding signature as follows.

Definition 1 (linearly homomorphic network coding signatures adapted from [1]). A linearly homomorphic network coding signature scheme consists of a tuple of probabilistic, polynomial-time algorithms with the following functionality.
NetKG. Given the security parameter and , this algorithm outputs a key pair , where is the secret key and is the public verification key. Note that is the dimension of the vector spaces and is an upper bound to the size of the signed vectors.
NetSign. The signing algorithm takes a secret key , a file identifier and a vector as input and then outputs a signature .
NetVer. Given the public key , a file identifier , a vector , and a signature , the algorithm outputs a bit represents accept or reject.

NetEval(. Given a public key , a file identifier , and a set of tuples , this algorithm outputs a new signature such that if each is a valid signature on vector , then is a valid signature for obtained from the linear combination .

For correctness, it is required that if the key pair is output by (), then

(i)let and ; if NetSign, then NetVer;(ii)for all , any and all sets of triples ; if NetVer for all , then NetVer and .

The definition of unforgeability of linearly homomorphic signature is presented as follows.

Definition 2 (unforgeability adapted from [32]). For a linearly homomorphic network coding signature scheme , , the following game is considered.

Setup: The challenger runs to obtain and gives to .

Queries: Proceeding adaptively, specifies a sequence of data sets . For each , the challenger chooses uniformly from and gives to the tag and the signatures for .

Output: outputs a file identifier , a message , and a signature . The adversary wins if , and either (1) for all or (2) for some but , where span is the subspace generated by all .

The advantage of is defined to be the probability that wins the security game. is called unforgeable if for any PPT adversary , the advantage in the game is negligible in .

Let be a bilinear map, where and are bilinear groups of prime order . In [38], Boneh and Boyen introduced the definition of the -Strong Diffie-Hellman Assumption (q-SDH for short).

Definition 3 (-SDH assumption [38]). Let be the security parameter, be a prime, and be bilinear groups of prime order . Let be a generator of and be a generator of , respectively. Then we say that the -SDH Assumption holds in if for any PPT algorithm and any = poly(), the following probability is negligible in :

4. The Proposed Scheme

4.1. Architecture

Consider an application in practical. A log report of some intelligent terminals is supposed to be jointly published via the linear network coding. To prevent the injection of invalid data packets and make the transmission reliable, each data packet should be suffixed with a valid recipient before forwarding. A network coding signature scheme can help to meet this requirement when all terminal devices have the same key used for signing packets. However, if each device has its own key, a group of signatures cannot be directly combined for the corresponding packets. As a solution for the verification problem, we present this homomorphic network coding signature scheme for multiple sources.

An architecture is shown in Figure 1. A terminal device can be seen as a source, while the receiver wants to get the log report with a correct recipient. Each entity in the scheme is described as follows:

(i)Source nodes. After some parameters are generated as public information, the th source node generates its own key pair for signing and verifying. Each node has a part of the original file, and the part can be seen as a data packet. To obtain a signature , the th node signs its packet that belongs to the file with an identifier using . Then, it sends the signed tuple on its outgoing edges.(ii)Intermediate nodes. When an intermediate node receives some packets with the corresponding signatures, it checks whether any one is not valid. Then, it selects coefficients for the rest valid packets , and combines the packets and their signatures, respectively. Finally, the combined tuple is forwarded on the outgoing edges.(iii)Receiver. Once the receiver has collected file’s packets signed by using all secret keys, it checks the validity and recovers the original file if the check is passed.

Figure 1: Architecture of the proposed scheme.

4.2. Scheme Description

In this section, we present our construction of the multisource homomorphic network coding signature scheme. There are devices as source nodes, any number of intermediate nodes, and several receivers. For simplicity, we assume that each source node holds and forwards a packet of a file. The whole file can be represented as a augmented vector set , of which the th packet can be represented as . Each packet belongs to a file with the ID and some of the packets are encoded together with the same .

As described above, each source node has its own key pair in the system. For the th source, its private key is used to sign so that the signed packets can be verified by intermediate nodes which receive the signatures. After receiving several input packets, an intermediate node firstly checks each packet and discards all the packets that cannot pass the check. With a signature , the corresponding packet can be verified even though it is linear combinations of vectors originated from different sources. Then, using random or established coefficients, the node makes linear combinations of the remaining data packets and produces a signature for the encoded packet based on the received signatures without accessing the private keys. Briefly, an adversary’s attack is successful if it can generate a forged data packet that makes verification algorithm output 1 using public keys, while either is an invalid file ID or is valid but is not in the domain of files.

Then, we describe the algorithms of a multisource homomorphic network coding signature scheme based on the signature scheme CFW in [1] as follows:

Public System Parameters. Choose a bilinear map : , where are bilinear groups of prime order , while is a generator of and is a generator of . Randomly choose elements from . The algorithm outputs system parameters as public.

NetKG. This algorithm is run by each th source node for setting up its own key pair. The th source node randomly chooses to set its private key as and public key as . The algorithm outputs the key pair .

NetSign. Each th source node signs its data packet as if in the single-source signature scheme CFW, but their secret key is different. For the packet vector , the th source computes its signature as follows:

(i)Let and ;(ii)Compute and output its signature , where for each .

Note that, for the th source node, the rest packets in other than are all set as zero vectors before forwarding.

NetEval. If an intermediate node has received valid packet sets from the same , of which signature is . Each coefficient is determined by the intermediate node. The combined signature of this node is also a -dimension vector , where and each . This algorithm outputs the combined signature . Then, the modified packet is forwarded to other nodes along with its signature .

NetVer. Taking public keys , file ID , data packet , and the corresponding signature as input, the verification algorithm outputs

1, if and 0, otherwise.

5. Analysis

5.1. Correctness

According to the definition in Section 3, we analyze the correctness of the proposed scheme.

Theorem 4. The proposed multisource homomorphic network coding signature scheme is correct.

Proof. For each , the th original vector is denoted as . There is . Thus, the verification result on a valid original signature is .
On the other hand, in a modified packet, and . There is . Thus, The verification result on a combined signature is .
Therefore, algorithms in the proposed is correct.

5.2. Security

Then, we give the proof that the signatures in the scheme is unforgeable according to the definition in Section 3.

Theorem 5. The proposed multisource homomorphic network coding signature scheme is secure under the -SDH assumption.

Proof. If an adversary has a PPT algorithm which can forge the valid signature for a data packet, can be used to construct an efficient algorithm to forge valid signatures the CFW signature scheme.
The public system parameters are chosen as follows: are bilinear groups of prime order and is a bilinear map: ; is a generator of and is a generator of ; are random factors.
The algorithm takes the public system parameters , the public keys a valid identifier , and each packet with its signature as input. According to the received data signed packets (, ), algorithm tries to output a forged signed packet which makes verification algorithm output 1. That is, either or and .
Then, based on algorithm, we construct another PPT algorithm which can produce a forged signature for packets in the CFW signature scheme.
We assume that the first-source node uses as its private and public keys, i.e., and . Other source nodes whose private and public keys are generated as follows:

(i)Randomly select numbers from : ;(ii)Set the private key of the th source and its public key ;

Using the NetSign algorithm, each source node outputs its signature.
A forged signature packet for CFW is output, where and .
It is easy to get

Since either , or , the forged signature is valid.
However, the CFW signature scheme is secure under q-SDH assumption. Therefore, the proposed multisource homomorphic network coding signature scheme is secure under the -SDH assumption.

6. Conclusion

In this paper, to give a solution for authentication of network coding, we propose the multisource homomorphic network coding signature in the standard model and show that the signature scheme is security under -SDH assumption holds. The proposed scheme can effectively guarantee the availability in a multisource IoT system.

Data Availability

The data used to support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province for Distinguished Young Scholars (2014A030306020), Guangzhou Scholars Project for Universities of Guangzhou (no. 1201561613), Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province, China (2015B010129015), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 61472091), and the National Natural Science Foundation for Outstanding Youth Foundation (no. 61722203).

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