QS-Auth: A Quantum-secure mutual authentication protocol based on PUF and Post-Quantum Signature for Heterogeneous Delay-Tolerant Networks

Delay tolerant networks supporting heterogeneous communication are a promising network architecture solution that can meet today’s communication requirements involving nodes in space, terrestrial and water networks. These networks with dynamic topology and dynamic set of participating nodes make enablement of secure authentication between nodes in this network architecture a critical requirement. In this paper, we propose a novel Quantum-Secure Authentication (QS-Auth) protocol that enables mutual-authentication in Heterogeneous Delay tolerant network environment, while achieving quantum-resistance using the combination of PUF and Post-Quantum signature. The proposed tree-based region structure enables scalability and distributes the responsibility for trust to individual region heads and eliminates high risk root nodes in other tree-based solutions. The proposed scheme can meet the high secure mutual-authentication requirement in critical networks like defence, disaster regions, satellite communications etc. We demonstrate the correctness of our proposed scheme by conducting thorough informal and formal security analysis. The performance analysis is done by the evaluation of efficiency, computation and communication cost. The results of our analysis proves that the proposed protocol meets the security criteria and is well suited for heterogeneous delay tolerant network environments.