Most ad hoc networks do not implement any network access control, leaving these networks vulnerable to resource consumption attacks where a malicious node injects packets into the network with the goal of depleting the resources of the nodes relaying the packets. To thwart or prevent such attacks, it is necessary to employ authentication mechanisms that ensure that only authorized nodes can inject traffic into the network. In this paper, we present LHAP, a scalable and light-weight authentication protocol for ad hoc networks. LHAP is based on two techniques: (i) hop-by-hop authentication for verifying the authenticity of all the packets transmitted in the network and (ii) one-way key chain and TESLA for packet authentication and for reducing the overhead for establishing trust among nodes. We analyze the security of LHAP, and show LHAP is a lightweight security protocol through detailed performance analysis.