A Recursive Algorithm for General Hash Chain Traversal

Abstract

A hash chain is a popular tool for improving the efficiency of several cryptographic applications. In spite of the computation efficiency of one-way function, the performance issue is a challenging research topic for chains with long length in resource-constrained environments. We propose a recursive algorithm of hash chain traversal for arbitrary length n with log 2 n storage cells and the computational costs of our solution are less than 1 2 n log 2 n hash function evaluations.