Security analysis and improvement of an anonymous DoS-resistant access control protocol

Abstract

The convenience and flexibility of wireless networks to allow clients (user nodes) to be connected to the network at any place and any time have resulted in the growth and increased popularity of wireless networks. Access control in wireless networks is very important to prevent unauthorized users from accessing the network. Besides this, client anonymity and resistance to Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks are also important and should be provided by access control protocols for wireless networks. Password-based authentication provide good solutions for access control protocols, however they usually do not provide client identity confidentiality and DoS resistance. In this paper, we review a DoS-resistant anonymous access control (AAC) protocol and point out that the protocol does not provide protection against three different DoS attacks. We then propose a new DoS-resistant AAC protocol that avoids the flaws of the previous protocol. Our proposed protocol also provides client anonymity and protection against DoS attacks. A security and complexity analysis shows that our proposed protocol is secure and efficient for access control in wireless networks.