HC-CSBA: Hash-Chained Collaborative Swarm-Based Batch Authentication for Secure UAV Communications in Satellite–Terrestrial Integrated Networks

Abstract

The rapid deployment of UAV swarms in the Internet of Drones (IoD), including emerging satellite-assisted and satellite-terrestrial integrated aerial networks, demands lightweight, scalable, and secure authentication mechanisms for mission-critical communications. Existing schemes either incur high computational overhead or rely on hardware-dependent Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs), increasing deployment complexity and cost. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a hash-chained collaborative swarm-based batch authentication protocol (HC-CSBA) for resource-constrained UAV networks. HC-CSBA replaces PUF-based capture resistance with Shamir’s $(k,n)$ -threshold secret sharing and employs Lamport hash chains for timestamp-independent replay protection. In addition, ECC-based batch verification enables simultaneous authentication of multiple drones through a single aggregate equation. Formal analysis using Scyther under the Dolev-Yao model verifies mutual authentication, replay resistance, perfect forward secrecy, and resilience against physical capture attacks. Experimental results on the secp256k1 curve show that HC-CSBA achieves scalable authentication with minimal latency overhead compared to the baseline, while eliminating specialized hardware dependencies. The proposed HC-CSBA protocol provides a lightweight and software-defined security solution for next-generation IoD swarms and offers a practical security foundation for secure communication and access control in future satellite-terrestrial integrated UAV networks.