LHB-Auth: Lattice-based hierarchical access authentication mechanism of 6G satellite-terrestrial integrated networks

Satellite-terrestrial integrated network (STIN) for 6G is promising to offer ubiquitous Internet services across the globe for mobile subscribers,the complex heterogeneity of the 6G satellite-terrestrial integrated network leads to various security threats and challenges, such as single-point failures, denial-of-service (DoS) attacks and quantum attack. Existing solutions can only defend against partial attacks and are unable to fend off all the aforementioned threats. In this paper, we propose LHB-Auth, a lattice-based hierarchical blockchain access authentication protocol, including two novel components, PolRing-HIBS and Mul-Arch. Specifically, PolRing-HIBS is a hierarchical identity-based signature scheme (HIBE) that uses a polynomial ring against quantum attack. Mul-Arch is a blockchain-based hierarchical architecture for 6G STIN, where the blockchain is divided into a control layer, an access point (AP) layer, and a user layer to avoid single-point failures and DoS attacks. We have theoretically proven the security of LHB-Auth under the random oracle model and analyze the security properties against the above security challenges. Meanwhile, compared to other authentication schemes, LHB-Auth reduces the average authentication delay by 12.5%, indicating that LHB-Auth boasts high authentication efficiency.