Robust multiple servers architecture based authentication scheme preserving anonymity

Abstract

Recently, many dynamic ID based remote user authentication schemes using smart card have been proposed to improve the security in multiple servers architecture authentication systems. In 2017, Kumari and Om proposed an anonymous multi-server authenticated key agreement scheme, which is believed to be secure against a range of network attacks. Nevertheless, in this paper we reanalyze the security of their scheme, and show that the scheme is vulnerable to impersonation attack and server spoofing attack launched by any adversary without knowing any secret information of the victim users. In addition, their protocol fails to achieve the claimed user privacy protection. For handling these aforementioned shortcomings, we introduce a new biometric-based authentication scheme for multi-server architecture preserving user anonymity. Besides, Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN)-logic validated proof and discussion on possible attacks demonstrate the completeness and security of our scheme, respectively. Further, the comparisons in terms of security analysis and performance evaluation of several related protocols show that our proposal can provide stronger security without sacrificing efficiency.