Secure and time efficient hash-based message authentication algorithm for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are used in many applications to gather sensitive information which is then forwarded to an analysis center. Resource limitations have to be taken into account when designing a WSN infrastructure. Authentication in WSNs is critical, as they are often deployed unattended in hostile environments and must transmit information over unsecured mediums. However, the cost of performing cryptographic operations is an extremely limiting factor because sensor devices and related equipment are constrained by storage and computational ability. Hash functions are the most widespread among all Authentication primitives, and are currently used in multiple cryptographic schemes and in security protocols. This paper presents a new Secure Hash Algorithm called (2AMD-160) which uses a famous structure of hash algorithm given by the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science and RSA Data Security, Inc. To demonstrate the effectiveness of 2AMD-160 in terms of security and execution time, we compare our approach with two methods namely, MD5 and SHA1 hash function algorithms. Simulation results demonstrate that the execution time and the security achieved by the proposed method are more effective than the MD5 and SHA1.