Efficient Hierarchical Authentication Protocol for Multiserver Architecture

The multiserver architecture authentication (MSAA) protocol plays a significant role in achieving secure communications between devices. In recent years, researchers proposed many new MSAA protocols to gain more functionality and security. However, in the existing studies, registered users can access to all registered service providers in the system without any limitation. To ensure that the system can restrict users that are at different levels and can access to different levels of service providers, we propose a new lightweight hierarchical authentication protocol for multiserver architecture using a Merkle tree to verify user’s authentication right. The proposed protocol has hierarchical authentication functionality, high security, and reasonable computation and communication costs. Moreover, the security analysis demonstrates that the proposed protocol satisfies the security requirements in practical applications, and the proposed protocol is provably secure in the general security model.