Abstract
Most of the previously proposed schemes use temporary identities for mobile users to provide unlinkable anonymous authentication for mobile users to the satellite network control center (NCC), where the temporary identities are picked at random after each session and agreed between a mobile user U and the NCC for the next session. Although such schemes provide full anonymity and are computationally efficient, the common problem with such strategies is that an adversary is able to desynchronize the temporary identity shared between U and NCC by means of simple jamming attack at a certain round in the authentication protocol. It results in the denial of all future sessions unless U re‐registers a new identity at the NCC. In this paper, we propose a new authentication scheme for mobile satellite networks. We avoid using synchronized temporary identities, which are always vulnerable to desynchronization attacks. We also avoid multi‐round authentication phase in order to reduce the jamming effect. Instead, a mobile user is able to create a new blinded version of his clear identity for each established session noninteractively, allowing him to anonymously authenticate himself to NCC in a fully unlinkable fashion. Moreover, in few milliseconds and one move non‐interactive way, U is able to establish a session key with NCC in a fully anonymous and authenticated way. Our new scheme uses recent advances in elliptic curve cryptography, and hence, it is efficient for implementation on mobile devices with limited resources. Through the rigorous security analysis using the broadly accepted Burrows–Abadi–Needham logic, informal security analysis, and the simulation for formal security verification using the widely known automated validation of Internet security protocols and sapplications tool, we show that our scheme is secure against various known attacks. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
