A survey of information authentication

The general principles that underlie all authentication schemes are reviewed and illustrated using the examples of an early telegraphy cable code, a US military authentication protocol, and authentication of electronic funds transfers in the US Federal Reserve System. Authentication threats from inside the system (i.e. untrustworthy sender or receiver) are described. The classification of authentication schemes as computationally secure, provably secure, or unconditionally secure is explained, and theoretical results are presented showing that a large number of encoding rules must be available in any unconditionally secure authentication code. Current authentication practices are examined