A fast real-time memory authentication protocol

We propose a new real-time authentication scheme for memory. As in previous proposals the scheme uses a Merkle tree to guarantee dynamic protection of memory. We use the universal hash function family NH for speed and couple it with an AES encryption in order to achieve a high level of security. The proposed scheme is much faster compared to similar schemes achieved by cryptographic hash functions such as SHA-1 due to the finer grain incremental hashing ability provided by NH. This advantage in speed becomes more vivid when the frequency of integrity checks becomes much lower than the frequency of memory updating. This feature is mainly due to the incremental nature of NH. Moreover, we show that with a small variation in the universal hash function family used, we can achieve fast and simple software implementation. Categories and Subject Descriptors D.4.6 [Operating Systems]: Security and Protection-Authentication, Cryptographic controls General Terms Design, Performance, Security Ke...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: CCS
• Authors: Yin Hu, Ghaith Hammouri, Berk Sunar
• Keywords: CCS 2008, Hash Function, Hash Function Family, Security Privacy, Universal Hash Function