Contextual Chain: Lightweight Continuity Authentication for Intermittently Connected Devices
Contextual Chain authenticates intermittently connected devices by making shared context memory the attacker's bottleneck.
Contextual Chain is a lightweight continuity-authentication protocol for intermittently connected devices that share evolving physical or operational context. Honest devices update a compact accumulator and fixed hash-based readiness lanes, pausing or rolling back after outages rather than searching branches. After an epoch freezes, a fresh challenge selects one lane under a short deadline, so an outsider who missed context may need to prepare many histories. In the random-oracle model, a counting theorem lower-bounds the deadline-accessible state required for a target success probability, while honest memory stays fixed.
- Continuity authentication for devices sharing evolving physical or operational context.
- An outsider may need many prepared histories before a deadline selects one lane.
- Honest readiness memory stays fixed regardless of how many histories exist.
- A random-oracle counting theorem lower-bounds required retained attacker state.
From the original article
1 min read at arxiv.orgCan authentication make memory, rather than computational hardness, the attacker's bottleneck? Contextual Chain is a lightweight continuity protocol for intermittently connected devices that share evolving physical or operational context. An honest device follows one realized history, updating a compact accumulator and fixed hash-based readiness lanes; outages cause pause or bounded rollback, not branch search.
By Song-Ju Kim · arxiv.org
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