Patent ID: 8595504

Claim:
A method for authenticating a message in a network, the method comprising: generating, in a sink device, a private key and a public key, wherein the private key comprises a plurality of sub-private keys and the public key comprises a plurality of sub-public keys, the generation of the public key comprising: hashing the sub-private keys; constructing a plurality of hash trees, the hash trees comprising a plurality of leaf nodes, root nodes, and intermediate nodes between the leaf nodes and the root nodes, wherein the leaf nodes are the hashed sub-private keys; and selecting the root nodes of the hash trees as the sub-public keys; and generating, in the sink device, a signature for the message, wherein the signature comprises one of the sub-private keys and an authentication path associated with the one of the sub-private keys in a first one of the hash trees, and the generation of the signature comprises: hashing the message into a hash value; splitting the hash value into k piece(s), wherein one value of the k piece(s) is k 1 ; using k 1 as an index to select the one of the sub-private keys; and using the one of the sub-private keys to select the authentication path.