Secure and efficient authentication scheme for access control in mobile pay-TV systems

Abstract

The increasing ubiquity and use of mobile devices enable them to access television programs through mobile pay-TV (MPTV) systems. To achieve secure communication in MPTV systems, authentication schemes for access control in these systems are needed. Recently, a one-to-many authentication (OTMA) scheme that guarantees secure communication in MPTV systems was proposed. However, it was found by other researchers that such a scheme could not resist the impersonation attack and could not provide mutual authentication. As a result, a new OTMA scheme was proposed and it was claimed that OTMA could solve the security weaknesses of the OTMA scheme. We demonstrate that the new OTMA scheme cannot resist the impersonation attack and cannot provide mutual authentication. To mitigate these major security weaknesses, we propose a new OTMA scheme. A security analysis of our proposed OTMA scheme demonstrates that it can overcome the security weaknesses of the previous OTMA scheme and improve its performance.