A provably secure aggregate authentication scheme for unmanned aerial vehicle cluster networks

Providing integrity, non-repudiation and validity for transmitted data is always very attractive in unmanned aerial vehicle cluster networks (UAVCN). Currently, “one by one” data authentication schemes with expensive computations can hardly be applied to a fast data transmission. In order to simultaneously resolve the security and efficiency issues, a novel data aggregate authentication scheme based on the ID-Based encryption, named IBE-AggAuth, is proposed for UAVCN. In the proposed scheme, all kinds of data from different UAVs can be checked by batch verification instead of “one-by-one” verification. In particular, it proves that IBE-AggAuth scheme is the existentially unforgeable security under adaptive chosen message and ID attacks (EUF-CMA), rigorously based on the elliptic curve computational Diffie-Hellman assumption in the random oracle model. The detailed performance evaluations demonstrate that IBE-AggAuth can not only guarantee data security, but also speed up the verification process with reducing computation and communication costs for UAVCN. Moreover, UAVs are allowed to join the data transmission dynamically at any moment, and IBE-AggAuth can be applicable to the de-centralized and self-organized environment of UAVCN.