Beyond Traditional Message Authentication Codes: Future Solutions for Efficient Authentication of Message Streams in IoT Networks

One of the major issues of secure communication in resource-constrained contexts is the overhead of integrity protection. A message authentication code (MAC) is a few-byte block used to authenticate a message. The receiver can check this block to ensure that a third party has not tampered with the message. A MAC is a tag attached to a message to ensure the message's integrity and authenticity. It is created by applying a MAC algorithm to a message in conjunction with a secret key. Traditional MAC schemes' tags (e.g., HMAC) are generally quite long and thus consume the majority of the total payload in IoT networks. This article proposes a new MAC approach that uses state chaining, random access messaging, and tag truncation for improved performance and security levels to address the issue. The proposed MAC protocol improves on existing MAC solutions such as CuMACs, Mini-MACs, and ProMACs.