Abstract
In this paper, we propose a novel continuous multicast authentication protocol for the Internet of Things applications based on secret sharing scheme. This protocol provides secure and efficient multicast authentication for frequent message transmissions in short session time interval. The protocol solves the problem of shared key among communicating group with its consequence of possible masquerade attack by introducing a novel use of secret sharing scheme. That is, the secret is used as an authenticator and its shares are used as authentication keys. Each share is designated to a specific recipient in a specific time through a challenge known only to the sender and that recipient. The share can be linked back to the secret and, hence, the message source can be authenticated. In addition, the protocol enables multicasting several messages in a specific time slots within a transmission session. Security evaluation of the protocol shows that it fulfills the stated security requirements and addresses the listed attacks. Performance evaluation of the protocol shows that it is lightweight in terms of computation and communication costs, thus addressing the resource-constrained IoT endpoints.