Information-Theoretically Secure Aggregate Authentication Code: Model, Bounds, and Constructions

Abstract : In authentication schemes where many users send authenticated messages to a receiver, it is desirable to aggregate them into a single short authenticated message in order to reduce communication complexity. In this paper, in order to realize such a mechanism in information-theoretic security setting, we first propose aggregate authentication codes. Specifically, we newly propose a model and a security definition for aggregate authentication codes. We also show tight lower bounds on sizes of entities’ secret-keys and (aggregated) tags. Furthermore, we present optimal (i.e., most efficient) constructions for aggregate authentication codes.