An Improved Digital Signature Protocol to Multi-User Broadcast Authentication Based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs)

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), users can use broadcast authentication mechanisms to connect to the target network and disseminate their messages within the network. Since data transfer for sensor networks is wireless, as a result, attackers can easily eavesdrop deployed sensor nodes and the data sent between them or modify the content of eavesdropped data and inject false data into the sensor network. Hence, the implementation of the message authentication mechanisms (in order to avoid changes and injecting messages into the network) of wireless sensor networks is essential. In this paper, we present an improved protocol based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) to accelerate authentication of multi-user message broadcasting. In comparison with previous ECC-based schemes, complexity and computational overhead of proposed scheme is significantly decreased. Also, the proposed scheme supports user anonymity, which is an important property in broadcast authentication schemes for WSNs to preserve user privacy and user untracking.