Efficient network authentication protocols: Lower bounds and optimal implementations

SummaryResearch in authentication protocols has focused largely on developing and analyzing protocols that are secure against certain types of attacks. There is little and only scattered discussion on protocol efficiency. This paper presents results on the lower bounds on the numbers of messages, rounds, and encryptions required for network authentication. For each proven lower bound, an authentication protocol achieving the bound is also given, thus proving that the bound is a tight bound if the given optimal protocol is secure. Moreover, we give impossibility results of obtaining protocols that are simultaneously optimal with respect to the numbers of messages and rounds.

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