RCBE-AS: Rabin cryptosystem–based efficient authentication scheme for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are applicable in numerous fields ranging from very common to those demanding critical security concerns. It is recommended to provide external users a direct access to the data from sensors as per their need for real-time applications. To avoid unauthorized access, user authentication is essential for accessing the services between the nodes. Recently, Tai et al. designed an authentication scheme providing user anonymity, though it is found that Tai et al. are susceptible to attacks like offline password guessing, privileged insider, and known session-specific temporary information. Furthermore, it does not provide user anonymity and the secret key of gateway node is insecure. To address these security concerns, “Rabin cryptosystem”–based authentication scheme is proposed. It considers three factors for authentication, namely key generation, encryption, and decryption. During key generation, it takes two prime numbers as private and public key is computed as product of private keys. For encryption steps, only public key is used. The Blum-Blum-Shub pseudo-random bit generator algorithm and private key are used in the decryption process. The proposed scheme provides better security features because of its strong integer factorization which also increases the efficiency of the encryption and decryption process. It is apparent from security analysis of the RCBE-AS that it is free from attacks. This scheme is also simulated formally with AVISPA that shows that it is safe against cryptographic attacks. The proposed scheme also has less communication cost as compared to other related schemes. This scheme uses a random oracle model and automated tool, AVISPA, for formal security analysis to prove its efficacy. Furthermore, it provides mutual authentication using BAN logic.