Analysis and design of an authentication protocol for space information network

With the development of mobile communication technology, space information network plays an essential role in meeting the increasing demands of mobile communications. As a basic and powerful security mechanism, authentication protocol provides primary protection. In 2012, Zheng et al. proposed an efficient four-phase authentication scheme for space information network. But we observed that it is vulnerable to various attacks, such as the identity spoofing attack, malicious service request attack and denial of service attack. In this paper, we analyze the protocol in detail. Then an improved authentication scheme based on the self-renewal and timeout retransmission mechanism of user's temporary identity is proposed. The formal verification with SVO logic proves that the proposed authentication protocol is secure.