Certificateless-Signature-Based Authenticated Key Agreement Protocol for Grid

The traditional authentication for grid is based on PKI framework, using standard X.509 certificates. But with the growing scale of the grid, certificate management would become an encumbrance. However, certificateless-based signature scheme can overcome these problems for its certificate-free feature, and make authentication more efficient. In this paper, a certificateless-signature-based authenticated key agreement protocol is designed, which aims at circumventing the key escrow issues inherited in the identity-based schemes and the certificate management burden in PKI-based cryptosystems in grid. Then its security and performance analysis are made, which shows that the new protocol is secure and efficient.