An anonymous roaming authentication scheme in global mobility networks

In Global Mobility Networks (GLOMONET), an anonymous authentication scheme is an essential way to improve the security of roaming services. Recently, He et al. proposed an improved anonymous roaming authentication scheme based on Xie et al.'s research in GLOMONET. In this paper, authors identify that the scheme fails to achieve anonymity. Furthermore, we also find that the scheme still has some deficiencies, which need strict time synchronization and have high computational cost. We propose an improved anonymity scheme to eliminate these weaknesses. Firstly, we use a random temporary identity to enhance anonymity. Second, timestamps and nonces are used at the same time to avoid the problem of time synchronization. Finally, one-way hash functions are used to replace the exponentiation for decreasing the total computation time. The performance analysis illustrates that the authentication time of the proposed scheme is 50% less than He et al.'s scheme.