A Recursive Algorithm for General Hash Chain Traversal

A hash chain is a popular tool for improving the efficiency of several cryptographic applications. In spite of the computation efficiency of one-way function, the performance issue is a challenging research topic for chains with long length in resource-constrained environments. We propose a recursive algorithm of hash chain traversal for arbitrary length n with [log₂n] storage cells and the computational costs of our solution are less than ¹₂ n log₂ n hash function evaluations.