Two Way Mobile Authentication System

Abstract

The ever increasing use of internet around the world has without doubt increased the\rusage of internet based services, e-business models, easier ways of communication\rand information sharing. Such drastic increase in usage of network based systems has\rmade the current cyber security systems old dated as the hackers and attackers of\rnetworked systems is on the rise with new and modern attack methodologies. This\rhas necessitated the need of more secure ways of communications. The issues of\rConfidentiality, Integrity and the Availability of systems are of prime importance\rand more research towards these issues has been called for around the world.\rOne of the major areas of security improvement is the way in which\rauthentication of users is carried out. Even though many organizations still rely on\rstatic ID and password authentication system, this method is getting old and there is\ra requirement for a better way of authentication which is required. One of the\rsolutions for this issue is the two factor authentication technique as a fundamental\rsecurity function. Our thesis proposal explores the two factor authentication\rtechnique and implementation issues which can be used for the two factor\rauthentication technique.\rTwo-factor authentication method is implemented in two main phases. In the\rfirst phase, the authenticator gets a request generated by the application to\rauthenticate a specified user. When the request is received, it generates a one-time\rpassword and sends it through a SMS to a GSM cell phone registered for that\rspecified user. The one-time password has a default timeout 5 minutes which is\rconfigurable. In the second phase of the authentication, a request is sent with the user\rid and a hash of the one-time password. If both the one-time and user specified\rpassword is valid then the user will be authenticated. [1] It proposes a secure,\rconvenient and user friendly two factor authentication scheme and discusses its\rapplications to online banking.