Message Authentication Privacy Using Quantum Key Distribution

Abstract

Sensor networks are the key to gathering the information needed by smart environments, However, the highly constrained nature of sensors imposes a difficult challenge: their reduced availability of memory, processing power and energy hinders the deployment of many modern cryptographic algorithms considered secure, a number of extensive analyses comparing different encryption algorithms and key management schemes have been developed, while very little attention has been given to message authentication solutions. The purpose is to assess the options for protecting the integrity of messages in sensor networks and have a solution that protects against all kinds of attacks. A polynomial - based scheme was introduced to provide pair-wise connectivity, high scalability and also observed to be resilient against both traffic analysis and node capture attacks. In this paper, we propose a scalable message authentication scheme based on quantum cryptography which exchange a key securely by means of quantum key distribution and allows the breaking of various popular public-key encryption and signature schemes (e.g., RSA and ElGamal).