A User Centric Group Authentication Scheme for Secure Communication

2025-12-03

AI Summary

Third-generation group authentication schemes (GAS) suffer from inability to identify participating users’ identities and fail to prevent legitimate members from maliciously sharing credentials. Method: This paper proposes a novel identity-revealing, collusion-resistant group authentication mechanism integrating inner-product space theory, polynomial interpolation, and elliptic curve cryptography. It establishes a strong binding between user identities and group keys, enabling explicit identity identification, behavior traceability, and non-repudiable signatures during authentication—without requiring real-time involvement of a certification authority. Contribution/Results: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first GAS that simultaneously preserves group anonymity and enables internal member behavior auditing. It effectively mitigates credential leakage and collusion attacks, making it suitable for trusted collaborative scenarios demanding identity accountability. The scheme significantly improves both efficiency and controllability compared to existing approaches.

Technology Category

• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Coordination and Collaboration
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Attacks and countermeasures in recommendation systems
• Responsible Web: Data and user privacy-enhancing technologies for the Web

Abstract

Group Authentication Schemes (GAS) are methodologies developed to verify the membership of multiple users simultaneously. These schemes enable the concurrent authentication of several users while eliminating the need for a certification authority. Numerous GAS methods have been explored in the literature, and they can be classified into three distinct generations based on their foundational mathematical principles. First-generation GASs rely on polynomial interpolation and the multiplicative subgroup of a finite field. Second-generation GASs also employ polynomial interpolation, but they distinguish themselves by incorporating elliptic curves over finite fields. While third-generation GASs present a promising solution for scalable environments, they demonstrate a limitation in certain applications. Such applications typically require the identification of users participating in the authentication process. In the third-generation GAS, users are able to verify their credentials while maintaining anonymity. However, there are various applications where the identification of participating users is necessary. In this study, we propose an improved version of third-generation GAS, utilizing inner product spaces and polynomial interpolation to resolve this limitation. We address the issue of preventing malicious actions by legitimate group members. The current third-generation scheme allows members to share group credentials, which can jeopardize group confidentiality. Our proposed scheme mitigates this risk by eliminating the ability of individual users to distribute credentials. However, a potential limitation of our scheme is its reliance on a central authority for authentication in certain scenarios.

Problem

• Develops a user-centric group authentication scheme for secure communication
• Addresses the limitation of third-generation GAS by enabling user identification
• Prevents malicious credential sharing among legitimate group members

Innovation

• Uses inner product spaces for authentication
• Applies polynomial interpolation technique
• Prevents credential sharing among users