Loss‐tolerant authentication with digital signatures
Xixiang Lv, Yi Mu, Hui Li · Security and Communication Networks · 2013
ABSTRACT Consider a signed file that cannot be verified because of some fraction loss or noise, which might not affect the business of users. It would be desirable for the verifier to locate the damaged fractions so that the authenticity of other components of the file can be ensured. Thereafter, the verifier can decide whether or not to accept it. To address this issue, in this paper, we present a loss‐tolerant authentication scheme, which allows the verifier to locate the damaged elements in the signed file stream. Our idea is to allow the signed file to be fragmented, and each fragment is appended a short authentication tag, which enables the verifier to find the modified fragments in the signed file and verify the signature even if some fragments are lost. The proposed scheme adopts a combination of Reed–Solomon error correction and erasure codes, aiming to allow verifiers to locate the modified fractions and thereafter reconstruct the signature when sufficient original fractions of the file are obtained. Our scheme offers many potential applications such as loss‐tolerant transmission and storage. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.