On-Line Decrypting: A Homomorphic Realization for Network Coding
The paper studies the problem of communicating message secretly in the network performing random linear network coding, where the network internal nodes are allowed to randomly mix the incoming packets and then forward. The paper proposes HoNet, an end-to-end homomorphic encryption that is theoretically proved secure against network adversaries who can fully access the information of network coding schemes and eavesdrop every network transmission. A direct payoff of homomorphic encryption is that network nodes could on-line decrypt (or re-encrypt) the mixed ciphertexts, which significantly increases network throughput in scenarios such as peer-to-peer networks and satellite systems. In particular, HoNet addresses the two main challenges faced by the traditional homomorphic encryption schemes for point-to-point transmissions:high computational overhead and throughput loss-rate. To be precise, HoNet possesses linear time nodes complexity and asymptotically zero loss-rate.