A MAC-based scheme for multi-generation content distribution with network coding

The system that uses network coding is highly susceptible to pollution attacks, where a malicious node may pollute a small number of packets with the purpose of preventing the recipient nodes from reconstructing the original messages properly. Some schemes that use Message Authentication Code (MAC) have been proposed for resisting this attack. However, these schemes could be broken with probability 1/q, where q is the size of the underlying field. Although the trace function has already been used for constructing MACs for a higher security, it can only be used for single-generation distribution. This paper proposes a novel MAC-based scheme that also employs trace function. However, different from prior work, our scheme can be immediately used for secure multi-generation distribution.