Time-Assisted Authentication Protocol

TL;DR

This paper introduces TAP, a secure, lightweight, time-assisted authentication protocol for mobile networks that reduces complexity and enhances security through time-based keys and re-authentication tickets.

Contribution

The paper presents TAP, a novel authentication protocol utilizing time-based encryption keys and re-authentication tickets to improve security and efficiency in mobile environments.

Findings

TAP reduces communication and computational complexity during authentication.

Security analysis confirms TAP's robustness using CSP and rank function methods.

TAP effectively supports seamless mobility with secure re-authentication.

Abstract

Authentication is the first step toward establishing a service provider and customer (C-P) association. In a mobile network environment, a lightweight and secure authentication protocol is one of the most significant factors to enhance the degree of service persistence. This work presents a secure and lightweight keying and authentication protocol suite termed TAP (Time-Assisted Authentication Protocol). TAP improves the security of protocols with the assistance of time-based encryption keys and scales down the authentication complexity by issuing a re-authentication ticket. While moving across the network, a mobile customer node sends a re-authentication ticket to establish new sessions with service-providing nodes. Consequently, this reduces the communication and computational complexity of the authentication process. In the keying protocol suite, a key distributor controls the key generation arguments and time factors, while other participants independently generate a keychain based on key generation arguments. We undertake a rigorous security analysis and prove the security strength of TAP using CSP and rank function analysis.