A secure user anonymity-preserving biometric-based multi-server authenticated key agreement scheme using smart cards

Advancement in communication technology provides a scalable platform for various services, where a remote user can access the server from anywhere without moving from its place. It provides a unique opportunity for online services such that a user does not need to be physically present at the service center. These services adopt authentication and key agreement protocols in order to ensure authorized and secure access to the resources. Most of the authentication schemes proposed in the literature support a single-server environment, where the user has to register with each server. If a user wishes to access multiple application servers, he/she requires to register with each server. The multi-server authentication introduces a scalable platform such that a user can interact with any server using single registration. Recently, Chuang and Chen proposed an efficient multi-server authenticated key agreement scheme based on a user’s password and biometrics (Chuang and Chen, 2014). Their scheme is a lightweight, which requires the computation of only hash functions. In this paper, we first analyze Chuang and Chen’s scheme and then identify that their scheme does not resist stolen smart card attack which causes the user’s impersonation attack and server spoofing attack. We also show that their scheme fails to protect denial-of-service attack. We aim to propose an efficient improvement on Chuang and Chen’s scheme to overcome the weaknesses of their scheme, while also retaining the original merits of their scheme. Through the rigorous informal and formal security analysis, we show that our scheme is secure against various known attacks including the attacks found in Chuang and Chen’s scheme. Furthermore, we simulate our scheme for the formal security verification using the widely-accepted AVISPA (Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications) tool and show that our scheme is secure against the replay and man-in-the-middle attacks. In addition, our scheme is comparable in terms of the communication and computational overheads with Chuang and Chen’s scheme and other related existing schemes.     

An efficient and security dynamic identity based authentication protocol for multi-server architecture using smart cards

Generally, if a user wants to use numerous different network services, he/she must register himself/herself to every service providing server. It is extremely hard for users to remember these different identities and passwords. In order to resolve this problem, various multi-server authentication protocols have been proposed. Recently, Sood et al. analyzed Hsiang and Shih's multi-server authentication protocol and proposed an improved dynamic identity based authentication protocol for multi-server architecture. They claimed that their protocol provides user's anonymity, mutual authentication, the session key agreement and can resist several kinds of attacks. However, through careful analysis, we find that Sood et al.'s protocol is still vulnerable to leak-of-verifier attack, stolen smart card attack and impersonation attack. Besides, since there is no way for the control server CS to know the real identity of the user, the authentication and session key agreement phase of Sood et al.'s protocol is incorrect. We propose an efficient and security dynamic identity based authentication protocol for multi-server architecture that removes the aforementioned weaknesses. The proposed protocol is extremely suitable for use in distributed multi-server architecture since it provides user's anonymity, mutual authentication, efficient, and security.     

A secure and provable multi-server authenticated key agreement for TMIS based on Amin et al. scheme

The security for Telecare Medicine Information Systems (TMIS) has been crucial for reliable dispensing of the medical services to patients at distant locations. Security and privacy element needs to be there for any physician or caregiver to make certain an appropriate diagnosis, medical treatment or any other exchange of critical information. In this connection, many relevant TMIS-based authentication schemes have been presented, however various forms of attacks and inefficiencies render these schemes inapplicable for a practical scenario. Lately, Amin et al. proposed a scheme based on a multi-server authentication for TMIS. However, the Amin et al., scheme has been found vulnerable to user and server impersonation attacks. We have proposed an improved model with higher performance and efficiency, as evident from the forthcoming sections. Besides, the scheme has been backed up by formal security analysis using BAN logic to ensure the resilience of the proposed scheme.     

多服务器架构下认证与密钥协商协议

随着网络应用的广泛发展,网络中服务器的体系结构通常由许多不同的服务器组成.多服务器架构下的认证与密钥协商协议是实现远程用户认证的关键.单次注册是多服务架构下的认证与密钥协商协议的最重要特性,而采用动态的身份进行登录认证能有效地保护隐私.Chuang等人结合智能卡和生物特征,提出了一种基于可信计算的匿名可认证密钥协商协议,并指出其协议适用于多服务器环境同时能满足其必需的安全需求.分析指出Chuang等人的协议并不能实现用户的匿名性,同时还容易遭到服务器假冒攻击和智能卡丢失攻击.为了弥补这些安全缺陷,设计每个应用服务器选用不同的秘密参数,提出了一种改进方案.通过对敌手可能的攻击行为分析,证明了改进方案能有效防范服务器假冒攻击、智能卡丢失攻击、窃听攻击、重放攻击等安全威胁,同时改进协议保持着运算简单的特性.     

An anonymous mobile user authentication protocol using self-certified public keys based on multi-server architectures

As a smart phone becomes a daily necessity, mobile services are springing up. A mobile user should be authenticated and authorized before accessing these mobile services. Generally, mobile user authentication is a method which is used to validate the legitimacy of a mobile login user. As the rapid booming of computer networks, multi-server architecture has been pervasive in many network environments. Much recent research has been focused on proposing password-based remote user authentication protocols using smart cards for multi-server environments. To protect the privacy of users, many dynamic identity based remote user authentication protocols were proposed. In 2009, Hsiang and Shih claimed their protocol is efficient, secure, and suitable for the practical application environment. However, Sood et al. pointed out Hsiang et al.’s protocol is susceptible to replay attack, impersonation attack and stolen smart card attack. Moreover, the password change phase of Hsiang et al.’s protocol is incorrect. Thus, Sood et al. proposed an improved protocol claimed to be practical and computationally efficient. Nevertheless, Li et al. found that Sood et al.’s protocol is still vulnerable to leak-of-verifier attack, stolen smart card attack and impersonation attack and consequently proposed an improvement to remove the aforementioned weaknesses. In 2012, Liao et al. proposed a novel pairing-based remote user authentication protocol for multi-server environment, the scheme based on elliptic curve cryptosystem is more secure and efficient. However, through careful analyses, we find that Liao et al.’s protocol is still susceptible to the trace attack. Besides, Liao et al.’s protocol is inefficient since each service server has to update its ID table periodically. In this paper, we propose an improved protocol to solve these weaknesses. By enhancing the security, the improved protocol is well suited for the practical environment.     

Efficient multi-server authentication scheme based on one-way hash function without verification table

Following advances in network technologies, an increasing number of systems have been provided to help network users via the Internet. In order to authenticate the remote users, password-based security mechanisms have been widely used. They are easily implemented, but these mechanisms must store a verification table in the server. If an attacker steals the verification table from the server, the attacker may masquerade as a legal user. To solve the verification table stolen problem, numerous single server authentication schemes without verification tables have been proposed. These single authentication schemes suffer from a shortcoming. If a remote user wishes to use numerous network services, they must register their identity and password in these servers. In response to this problem, numerous related studies recently have been proposed. These authentication schemes enable remote users to obtain service from multiple servers without separately registering with each server. This study proposes an alternative multi-server authentication scheme using smart cards. The proposed scheme is based on the nonce, uses one-way hash function, and does not need to store any verification table in the server and registration center. The proposed scheme can withstand seven well known network security attacks.     

高效的基于口令多服务器认证方案

随着计算机网络的快速发展,传统的单服务器认证方案存在明显的不足。如果一个远程用户想要从不同的服务器获得网络服务,则必须分别向这些服务器提交注册信息。为解决这个问题,研究者提出了多服务器认证方案。然而,大部分多服务器认证方案不能抵抗某些密码攻击或者计算复杂度太高。本文提出一种高效、安全的多服务器认证与密钥协商协议。由于智能卡和读卡器使得实现这类方案的成本较高,新方案没有使用智能卡。与相关的多服务器认证方案相比,新方案同时具有高效性和安全性,因而更适合在实际环境中应用。     

Robust biometrics-based multi-server authentication with key agreement scheme for smart cards on elliptic curve cryptosystem

Conventional single-server authentication schemes suffer a significant shortcoming. If a remote user wishes to use numerous network services, he/she must register his/her identity and password at these servers. It is extremely tedious for users to register numerous servers. In order to resolve this problem, various multi-server authentication schemes recently have been proposed. However, these schemes are insecure against some cryptographic attacks or inefficiently designed because of high computation costs. Moreover, these schemes do not provide strong key agreement function which can provide perfect forward secrecy. Based on these motivations, this paper proposes a new efficient and secure biometrics-based multi-server authentication with key agreement scheme for smart cards on elliptic curve cryptosystem (ECC) without verification table to minimize the complexity of hash operation among all users and fit multi-server communication environments. By adopting the biometrics technique, the proposed scheme can provide more strong user authentication function. By adopting the ECC technique, the proposed scheme can provide strong key agreement function with the property of perfect forward secrecy to reduce the computation loads for smart cards. As a result, compared with related multi-serve authentication schemes, the proposed scheme has strong security and enhanced computational efficiency. Thus, the proposed scheme is extremely suitable for use in distributed multi-server network environments such as the Internet and in limited computations and communication resource environments to access remote information systems since it provides security, reliability, and efficiency.     

A lightweight dynamic pseudonym identity based authentication and key agreement protocol without verification tables for multi-server architecture

Traditional password based authentication schemes are mostly considered in single-server environments. They are unfit for the multi-server environments from two aspects. Recently, base on Sood et al.?s protocol (2011), Li et al. proposed an improved dynamic identity based authentication and key agreement protocol for multi-server architecture (2012). Li et al. claim that the proposed scheme can make up the security weaknesses of Sood et al.?s protocol. Unfortunately, our further research shows that Li et al.?s protocol contains several drawbacks and cannot resist some types of known attacks. In this paper, we further propose a lightweight dynamic pseudonym identity based authentication and key agreement protocol for multi-server architecture. In our scheme, service providing servers don?t need to maintain verification tables for users. The proposed protocol provides not only the declared security features in Li et al.?s paper, but also some other security features, such as traceability and identity protection.     

Efficient and secure two-factor dynamic ID-based password authentication scheme with provable security

Password-based remote user authentication schemes using smart cards are designed to ensure that only a user who possesses both the smart card and the corresponding password can gain access to the remote servers. Despite many research efforts, it remains a challenging task to design a secure password-based authentication scheme with user anonymity. The author uses Kumari et al.’s scheme as the case study. Their scheme uses non-public key primitives. The author first presents the cryptanalysis of Kumari et al.’s scheme in which he shows that their scheme is vulnerable to user impersonation attack, and does not provide forward secrecy and user anonymity. Using the case study, he has identified that public-key techniques are indispensable to construct a two-factor authentication scheme with security attributes, such as user anonymity, unlinkability and forward secrecy under the nontamper resistance assumption of the smart card. The author proposes a password-based authentication scheme using elliptic curve cryptography. Through the informal and formal security analysis, he shows that proposed scheme is secure against various known attacks, including the attacks found in Kumari’s scheme. Furthermore, he verifies the correctness of mutual authentication using the BAN logic.     

更安全的匿名三因子多服务器身份认证协议研究

多服务器架构下的身份认证协议是远程认证的关键,但许多现有方案都存在潜在的攻击,未实现三因子安全性,忽略了匿名性。因此,需要指出其中的错误,并提出一个匿名的三因子方案。通过攻击者模型,攻击了温翔等人的方案,检验了新方案;使用椭圆曲线密码,保障认证阶段的核心安全性;使用模糊提取器与验证器,保护生物特征与口令;经与同类协议比较,分析了新协议的优势。分析表明,温翔等人的方案不能抵抗服务器仿冒用户,不具匿名性等。而新协议能有效防范智能卡丢失攻击、仿冒攻击等更多样的攻击,实现了匿名性、前向安全性等更全面的功能,计算效率也比前人提高了约14.8%。因此,可以应用于对安全性、可靠性要求较高的多服务器认证网络。     

一种更安全的基于智能卡的多服务器身份认证方案研究

随着网络和通讯技术的发展,多服务器的身份认证问题成为近几年研究的重点。针对Chuang等人提出的基于生物特征的多服务器密钥认证方案存在的安全性不足等问题,Wang等人进行了改进,但是仍未解决不同服务器密钥相同造成的恶意攻击和伪造攻击等问题。因此,本文提出了一种更安全的基于智能卡的多服务器身份认证方案。该方案在服务器注册阶段,将高熵秘密数与服务器的ID进行计算再重新分配给服务器,使得不同的服务器具有不同的密钥。最后通过五个方案功能和性能比较分析,得出改进方案比前三种方案时间上分别缩短了16.67%、20%、28.57%,且能有效阻止恶意服务器攻击、伪造攻击、重放攻击和中间人攻击等多种攻击,安全性得到了提高,满足实际网络的高可靠性需求。     

Cryptanalysis and improvement of a robust smart card secured authentication scheme on SIP using elliptic curve cryptography

The session initiation protocol (SIP) has been receiving a lot of attention to provide security in the Voice over IP (VoIP) in Internet and mobility management. Recently, Yeh et al. proposed a smart card-based authentication scheme for SIP using elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). They claimed that their scheme is secure against known security attacks. However, in this paper, we indicate that Yeh et al.’s scheme is vulnerable to off-line password guessing attack, user impersonation attack and server impersonation attack, in the case that the smart card is stolen and the information stored in the smart card is disclosed. As a remedy, we also propose an improved smart card-based authentication scheme which not only conquers the security weaknesses of the related schemes but also provides a reduction in computational cost. The proposed scheme also provides the user anonymity and untraceability, and allows a user to change his/her password without informing the remote server. To show the security of our protocol, we prove its security the random oracle model.     

A secure and efficient ECC-based user anonymity-preserving session initiation authentication protocol using smart card

The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a signaling communications protocol, which has been chosen for controlling multimedia communication in 3G mobile networks. The proposed authentication in SIP is HTTP digest based authentication. Recently, Tu et al. presented an improvement of Zhang et al.’s smart card-based authenticated key agreement protocol for SIP. Their scheme efficiently resists password guessing attack. However, in this paper, we analyze the security of Tu et al.’s scheme and demonstrate their scheme is still vulnerable to user’s impersonation attack, server spoofing attack and man-in-the middle attack. We aim to propose an efficient improvement on Tu et al.’s scheme to overcome the weaknesses of their scheme, while retaining the original merits of their scheme. Through the rigorous informal and formal security analysis, we show that our scheme is secure against various known attacks including the attacks found in Tu et al.’s scheme. Furthermore, we simulate our scheme for the formal security analysis using the widely-accepted AVISPA (Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications) tool and show that our scheme is secure against passive and active attacks including the replay and man-in-the-middle attacks. Additionally, the proposed scheme is comparable in terms of the communication and computational overheads with Tu et al.’s scheme and other related existing schemes.     

无线传感器网络中具有匿名性的用户认证协议

对He等人提出的无线传感器网络用户认证协议(Ad-Hoc Sensor Wireless Networks, 2010, No.4)进行研究,指出该协议无法实现用户匿名性,不能抵抗用户仿冒攻击和网关节点旁路攻击,并利用高效的对称密码算法和单向hash函数对其进行改进。理论分析结果证明,改进协议可以实现用户匿名性、不可追踪性及实体认证,抵抗离线字典攻击、用户仿冒攻击和网关节点旁路攻击,与同类协议相比,计算效率更高。     

A ticket-based multi-server biometric authentication scheme using extended chaotic maps for telecare medical information systems

With the development of technology, medical activities have gradually changed from traditional in-hospital diagnostic to telemedicine on the internet. These days, to accommodate security and efficiency in telemedicine, many authentication schemes were proposed for Telemedicine Medical Information Systems. Most of these authentication mechanisms usually rely on an online third party such that many schemes suffered from security vulnerabilities including limited bandwidth, impersonation attack, etc. For example, when the demand for authentication services suddenly increases, the third party bandwidth may overload so that the system broken and fails to serve correctly. Additionally, malicious legal insiders may easily obtain information of other participants, and then perform impersonation attacks. To prevent these weaknesses, this study develops a secure and efficient authentication scheme by using extended chaotic maps. The proposed scheme enables legal participants to directly authenticate and communicate each other without the help of an online trusted third party. It is also suitable for multi-server environment, and patients only register their identities to a center management server once. Then they can get services from all service providers in this system by using a registration ticket issued by the center management server. Accordingly, the limited bandwidth capability problems can be eliminated. Additionally, it has been shown that extended chaotic maps computations are more efficient than modular exponential computations or scalar multiplications on an elliptic curve. The proposed scheme not only provides more security properties, but also is more efficient than related schemes.

     

A user friendly mutual authentication and key agreement scheme for wireless sensor networks using chaotic maps

Spread of wireless network technology has opened new doors to utilize sensor technology in various areas via Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Many authentication protocols for among the service seeker users, sensing component sensor nodes (SNs) and the service provider base-station or gateway node (GWN) are available to realize services from WSNs efficiently and without any fear of deceit. Recently, Li et al. and He et al. independently proposed mutual authentication and key agreement schemes for WSNs. We find that both the schemes achieve mutual authentication, establish session key and resist many known attacks but still have security weaknesses. We show the applicability of stolen verifier, user impersonation, password guessing and smart card loss attacks on Li et al.’s scheme. Although their scheme employs the feature of dynamic identity, an attacker can reveal and guess the identity of a registered user. We demonstrate the susceptibility of He et al.’s scheme to password guessing attack. In both the schemes, the security of the session key established between user and SNs is imperfect due to lack of forward secrecy and session-specific temporary information leakage attack. In addition both the schemes impose extra computational load on resource scanty sensor-nodes and are not user friendly due to absence of user anonymity and lack of password change facility. To handle these drawbacks, we design a mutual authentication and key agreement scheme for WSN using chaotic maps. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to propose an authentication scheme for WSN based on chaotic maps. We show the superiority of the proposed scheme over its predecessor schemes by means of detailed security analysis and comparative evaluation. We also formally analyze our scheme using BAN logic.     

An efficient anonymous authentication protocol in multiple server communication networks (EAAM)

In a multi-server authentication environment, a user only needs to register once at a central registration place before accessing the different services on the different registered servers. Both, from a user point of view as for the management and maintenance of the infrastructure, these types of environments become more and more popular. Smartcard- or smartphone-based approaches lead to more secure systems because they offer two- or three-factor authentication, based on the strict combination of the user’s password, the user’s biometrics and the possession of the device. In this paper, we propose an efficient anonymous authentication protocol in multiple server communication networks, called the EAAM protocol, which is able to establish user anonymity, mutual authentication, and resistance against known security attacks. The novelty of the proposed scheme is that it does not require a secure channel during the registration between the user and the registration center and is resistant to a curious but honest registration system. These features are established in a highly efficient way with the minimum amount of communication flows between user and server during the establishment of the secret shared key and by using light-weight cryptographic techniques such as Chebyshev chaotic map techniques and symmetric key cryptography. The performance and security of the protocol are analyzed and compared with the latest new proposals in this field.     

A secure and efficient mutual authentication scheme for session initiation protocol

The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) as the core signaling protocol for multimedia services is receiving much attention. Authentication is becoming increasingly crucial issue when a user asks to use SIP services. Many authentication schemes for the SIP have been proposed. Very recently, Zhang et al. has presented an authentication scheme for SIP and claimed their scheme could overcome various attacks while maintaining efficiency. In this research, we illustrate that their scheme is susceptible to the insider attack and does not provide proper mutual authentication. We then propose a modified secure mutual authentication scheme to conquer the security flaws in Zhang et al.’s scheme. Through the informal and formal security analyses, we demonstrate that our scheme is resilient possible known attacks including the attacks found in Zhang et al.’s scheme. In addition, the performance analysis shows that our scheme has better efficiency in comparison with other related ECC-based authentication schemes for SIP.     

对三个多服务器环境下匿名认证协议的分析

设计安全高效的多服务器环境下匿名身份认证协议是当前安全协议领域的研究热点。基于广泛接受的攻击者模型,对多服务器环境下的三个代表性匿名认证协议进行了安全性分析.指出Wan等协议无法实现所声称的离线口令猜测攻击,且未实现用户匿名性和前向安全性;指出Amin等协议同样不能抵抗离线口令猜测攻击,且不能提供匿名性,对两种破坏前向安全性的攻击是脆弱的;指出Reedy等协议不能抵抗所声称的用户仿冒攻击和离线口令猜测攻击,且无法实现用户不可追踪性.突出强调这些协议失败的根本原因在于,违反协议设计的三个基本原则：公钥原则、用户匿名性原则和前向安全性原则.明确协议的具体失误之处,并提出相应修正方法.