Abstract
Multi-server authentication (MSA) enables the user to avail multiple services permitted from various servers out of a single registration through registration centre. Earlier, through single-server authentication, a user had to register all servers individually for availing the respective services. In the last few years, many MSA-based schemes have been presented; however, most of these suffer communication overhead cost due to the Registration Centre (RC) involvement in every mutual authentication session. In voice communication this round-trip latency becomes even more noticeable. Hence, the focus of the protocols design has been shifted towards light-weight cryptographic techniques such as Chebyshev chaotic map technique (CCM). We have reviewed few latest MSA-related schemes based on CCM and elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) as well. Based on these limitations and considerations, we have proposed a single-round trip MSA protocol based on CCM technique that foregoes the RC involvement during mutual authentication. Our study work is cost efficient in terms of communication delay and computation, and provides enhanced security by the use of public key cryptosystem. The proposed scheme is duly backed by formal security analysis and performance evaluation.