On Detecting Pollution Attacks in Inter-Session Network Coding

TL;DR

This paper introduces novel detection schemes for pollution attacks in inter-session network coding, including the first multi-source homomorphic MAC, enhancing security with low overhead.

Contribution

It defines corrupted packets in inter-session pollution and proposes three detection schemes, including the first multi-source homomorphic MAC supporting multiple keys.

Findings

All schemes enable in-network detection and are collusion-resistant.

They outperform traditional MACs in bandwidth and computation efficiency.

The proposed schemes are practical for real-world network coding scenarios.

Abstract

Dealing with pollution attacks in inter-session network coding is challenging due to the fact that sources, in addition to intermediate nodes, can be malicious. In this work, we precisely define corrupted packets in inter-session pollution based on the commitment of the source packets. We then propose three detection schemes: one hash-based and two MAC-based schemes: InterMacCPK and SpaceMacPM. InterMacCPK is the first multi-source homomorphic MAC scheme that supports multiple keys. Both MAC schemes can replace traditional MACs, e.g., HMAC, in networks that employ inter-session coding. All three schemes provide in-network detection, are collusion-resistant, and have very low online bandwidth and computation overhead.