A security enhanced authentication and key distribution protocol for wireless networks

Authentication and key distribution (AKD) protocols become more and more important in the design of wireless networks. The design criteria of the AKD protocols include the scalability, the communication efficiency, the computational efficiency and the robustness of security. In this paper, we first analyze the vulnerabilities of an AKD protocol for wireless networks under three types of attacks. Then, we propose an enhanced AKD protocol to overcome those vulnerabilities with the security functionality to prevent those malicious attacks. Security analysis and formal verification mainly by using AVISPA toolkit show that the proposed protocol is secure against those attacks.