An anonymity-preserving mobile user authentication protocol for global roaming services

Abstract

In this article, we put forward an anonymity-preserving mobile user authentication protocol for global roaming services. It deals with Mutual Authentication and Key Agreement (MAKA) between Mobile User (MU) and Foreign Agent (FA). It replaces the traditional Elliptic Curve Computational Diffie–Hellman Problem (ECCDHP) by Elliptic Curve Factorization Problem (ECFP) to reduce the computational overhead of the authentication system while keeping the system security unaltered. It can preserve user anonymity and conditional privacy using session-wise unique anonymous identities of MU, where each anonymous identity hides the real identity in such a way so that only Home Agent (HA) can recompute it. Besides, our protocol also concentrates on the anonymity and conditional privacy of FA. It also provides a simplified revocation strategy which minimizes the revocation and re-registration costs of the authentication system. We validate the security features through informal and formal security analysis. Finally, we present a performance comparison, and discuss the efficiency of the proposed protocol.