A robust user authentication scheme with self-certificates for wireless sensor networks

User authentication is a critical part of security, along with confidentiality and integrity, for computer systems that allow legitimate users remote access over an open communication network. Recently, user authentication for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has received considerable attention. We propose a robust user authentication scheme for WSNs. The scheme is based on elliptic-curve cryptosystems with self-certificates. The proposed scheme allows users to change their key pairs without interaction with a key distribution center (KDC). Moreover, the proposed scheme still works well even if the adversary captures t nodes out of n nodes in the WSNs. Security of the proposed scheme is modeled and analyzed with Petri nets. Our analysis shows that the proposed scheme can successfully defend some of the most notorious attacks, including replay attacks, forgery attacks, and node-capture attacks. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.