CRTBA: Chinese Remainder Theorem-Based Broadcast Authentication in Wireless Sensor Networks

Broadcast authentication is a critical security service in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). However, due to resource constrains of sensor nodes, providing authentication mechanism for broadcast message is difficult. ¿TESLA is a lightweight broadcast authentication protocol, which use a one-way hash chain and the delayed disclosure of keys to provide the authentication service. However, it suffers from several drawbacks in terms of time synchronization. In this paper, we propose a novel protocol, Chinese remainder theorem broadcast authentication (CRTBA), for wireless sensor networks. CRTBA uses Chinese Remainder Theorem to associate the authenticating procedure of the authentication key and the message authentication code of broadcast messages together. The proposed scheme has the advantage that no time synchronization is required and then the receiver can authentication packets instantly without buffering packets. The analysis shows that this scheme is efficient and practical, and can achiever better performance than the ¿TESLA.