A computer network is said to provide hop integrity iff when any router  p  in the network receives a message  m  supposedly from an adjacent router  q , then  p  can check that  m  was indeed sent by  q , was not modified after it was sent, and was not a replay of an old message sent from  q  to  p . In this paper, we describe three protocols that can be added to the routers in a computer network so that the network can provide hop integrity, and thus overcome most denial-of-service attacks. These three protocols are a secret exchange protocol, a weak integrity protocol, and a strong integrity protocol. All three protocols are stateless, require small overhead, and do not constrain the network protocol in the routers in any way.
['Mohamed G. Gouda', 'Elmootazbellah N. Elnozahy', 'Chin-Tser Huang', 'Tommy M. McGuire']
Hop integrity in computer networks