Towards authenticated network coding for named data networking

TL;DR: An optimized authentication model based on homomorphic encryption to deal with the "pollution attacks" problem in which malicious nodes can flood the network with bad packets and prevent the reconstruction of information at recipients is proposed.

Abstract: Named Data Networking represents a novel and an alternative approach to the current host based Internet architecture, in which the content becomes the core of the communication model. In this paper, we propose to improve named data networking robustness and throughput performances by introducing network coding functionalities. We also propose an optimized authentication model based on homomorphic encryption to deal with the "pollution attacks" problem in which malicious nodes can flood the network with bad packets and prevent the reconstruction of information at recipients. We first present our optimized homomorphic signature scheme with respect to the practical constraints such as the processing overhead generated by complex cryptographic operations and we define the network coding scheme tailored for named data networking. Our numerical results demonstrate that the use of this optimized model reduces by 10% the overall calculation cost induced by cryptographic operations compared to a hop-by-hop coding and verification model.