An efficient handover AKA protocol for wireless network using Chameleon Hash function

Abstract

The secure handover Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA) protocols were proposed to fulfill the increasing demands of handover based applications in the wireless network. However, these handover AKA protocols are vulnerable to malicious security attacks, suffer from privacy preservation, key escrow problem and key forward/ backward secrecy (KFS/ KBS). Moreover, these protocols exhibit high overhead and bandwidth consumption during the authentication process. To avoid these problems, we propose an efficient handover AKA protocol by using the double trap-door chameleon hash function in the wireless network. The proposed protocol takes the advantage of trap-door hash key holder to allows the network access. Hence, the proposed handover AKA protocol accommodates all the security features and provides the robust security. Moreover, the protocol avoids the key escrow problem, preserves the privacy of the communication entities and maintains the KFS/KBS. In addition, the formal simulation and security analysis of the proposed protocol are carried out using Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool. The security analysis shows that the protocol is free from various known attacks. Furthermore, the performance analysis of the protocol is carried out in terms of communication and computation overhead. The analysis represents that the protocol is secure and efficient compared to the existing handover protocols.