An improved one-to-many authentication scheme based on bilinear pairings with provable security for mobile pay-TV systems

Abstract

In 2012, Wang and Qin proposed an authentication mechanism in order to get access control for mobile pay-TV organization to enhance the Sun and Leu’s technique. Wang and Qin declared that their technique satisfies the security expectations or requirements intended for mobile pay-TV system. However, this work indicates that Wang and Qin’s scheme suffers from a nontrivial weakness. Successful impersonation attack is easily possible from an adversary who can impersonate mobile set (MS) to cheat the head-end system (HS). An adversary does not even need secret information to do so. As a remedy, we proposed an enhanced authentication technique for mobile pay-TV systems by taking a slight change in Wang and Qin’s scheme. The proposed scheme maintains the merits and covers the demerits of the previous schemes.