Robust secret key based authentication scheme using smart cards

Abstract

User authentication is an important part of security, along with confidentiality and integrity, for systems that allow remote access over untrustworthy networks, like the Internet. Recently, Chen et al. proposed an improvement on the SAS-like password authentication schemes to make not only keep the original advantages but also highlight a feature, mutual authentication between a user and a remote server. However, we find that their schemes are vulnerable to a denial-of-service attack and an insider attack. In addition, their schemes is not easily reparable. Accordingly, the current paper presents a secret-key-based authentication scheme using smart cards. Based on low-cost smart cards that support only simple hashing operations, the proposed scheme has a highly efficient and is designed to resist existing known attacks. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.