P-Coding: Secure Network Coding against Eavesdropping Attacks

Though providing an intrinsic secrecy, network coding is still vulnerable to eavesdropping attacks, by which an adversary may compromise the confidentiality of message content. Existing studies mainly deal with eavesdroppers that can intercept a limited number of packets. However, real scenarios often consist of more capable adversaries, e.g., global eavesdroppers, which can defeat these techniques. In this paper, we propose P-Coding, a novel security scheme against eavesdropping attacks in network coding. With the lightweight permutation encryption performed on each message and its coding vector, P-Coding can efficiently thwart global eavesdroppers in a transparent way. Moreover, P-Coding is also featured in scalability and robustness, which enable it to be integrated into practical network coded systems. Security analysis and simulation results demonstrate the efficacy and efficiency of the P-Coding scheme.