RAMHU: A New Robust Lightweight Scheme for Mutual Users Authentication in Healthcare Applications

Abstract

Providing a mechanism to authenticate users in healthcare applications is an essential security requirement to prevent both external and internal attackers from penetrating patients’ identities and revealing their health data. Many schemes have been developed to provide authentication mechanisms to ensure that only legitimate users are authorised to connect, but these schemes still suffer from vulnerable security. Various attacks expose patients’ data for malicious tampering or destruction. Transferring health-related data and information between users and the health centre makes them exposed to penetration by adversaries as they may move through an insecure channel. In addition, previous mechanisms have suffered from the poor protection of users’ authentication information. To ensure the protection of patients’ information and data, we propose a scheme that authenticates users based on the information of both the device and the legitimate user. In this paper, we propose a Robust Authentication Model for Healthcare Users (RAMHU) that provides mutual authentication between the server and clients. This model utilizes an Elliptic Curve Integrated Encryption Scheme (ECIES) and PHOTON to achieve strong security and good overall performance. RAMHU relies on multiple-pseudonym, physical address, and one-time password mechanisms to authenticate legitimate users. Moreover, extensive informal and formal security analysis with the automated validation of Internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA) tool demonstrate that our model offers a high level of security in repelling a wide variety of possible attacks.