A Generic Framework for Anonymous Authentication in Mobile Networks

Designing an anonymous user authentication scheme in global mobility networks is a non-trivial task because wireless networks are susceptible to attacks and mobile devices powered by batteries have limited communication, processing and storage capabilities. In this paper, we present a generic construction that converts any existing secure password authentication scheme based on a smart card into an anonymous authentication scheme for roaming services. The security proof of our construction can be derived from the underlying password authentication scheme employing the same assumptions. Compared with the original password authentication scheme, the transformed scheme does not sacrifice the authentication efficiency, and additionally, an agreed session key can be securely established between an anonymous mobile user and the foreign agent in charge of the network being visited. Furthermore, we present an instantiation of the proposed generic construction. The performance analysis shows that compared with other related anonymous authentication schemes, our instantiation is more efficient.