Provable secure authentication protocol with anonymity for roaming service in global mobility networks

Abstract

User authentication is an important security mechanism for recognizing legal roaming users. The emerging global mobility network, however, has called for new requirements for designing authentication schemes due to its dynamic nature and vulnerable-to-attack structure, which the traditional schemes overlooked, such as user anonymity. In this paper, we propose an efficient wireless authentication protocol with user anonymity for roaming service. We also introduce a formal security model suitable for roaming service in global mobility networks and show that the proposed protocol is provable secure based on this model. To the best of our knowledge, this paper offers the first formal study of anonymous authentication scheme for roaming service in global mobility networks. In addition, we point out some practical attacks on Chang et al.’s authentication scheme with user anonymity for roaming environments.