HiveSign: dynamic message signatures for resource-constrained wireless networks

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Wireless body area network (WBAN) are two of the emerging wireless networks that are becoming increasingly popular, owing to their applicability in a variety of domains and longevity-based designs. However, the flexibility they offer and their reduced manufacturing cost come with a trade-off --- they have severe implicit hardware restrictions. These restrictions limit their ability to store a large amount of data and/or perform sophisticated computation, thereby leading them to be classified as resource-constrained wireless networks. Their constraints further limit the security that can be implemented on these devices, necessitating design of optimized solutions for security. In our paper, we present a new approach that generates dynamic message signatures using simple logical operations, hashing and pseudorandom number generation (PRNG) to accomplish integrity and entity authentication. Our approach provides a means to verify the integrity of both the message as well as the key. We validate our proposal using security evaluation and complexity analysis.