Shorter hash-based signatures

•We give a description of a hash-based signature scheme with shorter signature footprint and better processing times.•We argue that our signature scheme is suitable for the Internet of Things.•We describe an efficient implementation of the scheme for a very constrained 8-bit AVR ATmega128l microcontroller.•We provide detailed benchmarks of time, memory and energy for the constrained microcontroller.

We describe an efficient hash-based signature scheme that yields shorter signatures than the state of the art. Signing and verification are faster as well, and the overall scheme is suitable for constrained platforms typical of the Internet of Things. We describe an efficient implementation of our improved scheme and show memory, time, and energy consumption benchmarks over a real device, i.e. the ATmega128l 8-bit AVR microcontroller embedded in MICAz, a typical sensor node used in wireless sensor networks.