A Secure and Effective Anonymous Authentication Scheme for Roaming Service in Global Mobility Networks

• Published in: Wireless personal communications Vol. 78; no. 1; pp. 247 - 269
• Main Authors: Zhao, Dawei, Peng, Haipeng, Li, Lixiang, Yang, Yixian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01.09.2014; Springer
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Authentication; Availability; Communications Engineering; Computer Communication Networks; Computer science; control theory; systems; Computer systems and distributed systems. User interface; Cryptography; Engineering; Exact sciences and technology; Information, signal and communications theory; Memory and file management (including protection and security); Memory organisation. Data processing; Mobile communication systems; Networks; Passwords; Remedies; Security; Signal and communications theory; Signal,Image and Speech Processing; Software; Tables (data); Telecommunications and information theory; Key agreement; Anonymity; Roaming; Global mobility networks; Authentication; Performance evaluation; Access control; Home automation; Formal logic; Mobility; Spoofing attack; Interoperability; Wide area network; Formal specification; Computer security; Computer attack; Password; Availability; Time stamping; Transmission protocol; Low power; Communication network; Synchronization; Date; Public key; Wireless network; Cost analysis; Mutual information; Mobile computing
• ISSN: 0929-6212; 1572-834X
• DOI: 10.1007/s11277-014-1750-y

Recently, Mun et al. analyzed Wu et al.’s authentication scheme and proposed an enhanced anonymous authentication scheme for roaming service in global mobility networks. However, through careful analysis, we find that Mun et al.’s scheme is vulnerable to impersonation attacks and insider attacks, and cannot provide user friendliness, user’s anonymity, proper mutual authentication and local verification. To remedy these weaknesses, we propose a novel anonymous authentication scheme for roaming service in global mobility networks. Compared with previous related works, our scheme has many advantages. Firstly, the secure authenticity of the scheme is formally validated by an useful formal model called BAN logic. Secondly, the scheme enjoys many important security attributes including prevention of various attacks, user anonymity, no verification table, local password verification and so on. Thirdly, the scheme does not use timestamp, thus it avoids the clock synchronization problem. Further, the scheme contains the authentication and establishment of session key scheme when mobile user is located in his/her home network, therefore it is more practical and universal for global mobility networks. Finally, performance and cost analysis show our scheme is more suitable for low-power and resource limited mobile devices and thus availability for real implementation.