Cryptanalysis and improvement of ‘a robust smart‐card‐based remote user password authentication scheme’

With the use of smart card in user authentication mechanisms, the concept of two‐factor authentication came into existence. This was a forward move towards more secure and reliable user authentication systems. It elevated the security level by requiring a user to possess something in addition to know something. In 2010, Sood et al. and Song independently examined a smart‐card‐based authentication scheme proposed by Xu et al. They showed that in the scheme of Xu et al., an internal user of the system can turn hostile to impersonate other users of the system. Both of them also proposed schemes to improve the scheme of Xu et al. Recently, Chen et al. identified some security problems in the improved schemes proposed by Sood et al. and Song. To fix these problems, Chen et al. presented another scheme, which they claimed to provide mutual authentication and withstand lost smart card attack. Undoubtedly, in their scheme, a user can also verify the legitimacy of server, but we find that the scheme fails to resist impersonation attacks and privileged insider attack. We also show that the scheme does not provide important features such as user anonymity, confidentiality to air messages, and revocation of lost/stolen smart card. Besides, the scheme defies the very purpose of two‐factor security. Furthermore, an attacker can guess a user's password from his or her lost/stolen smart card. To meet these challenges, we propose a user authentication method with user anonymity. We show through analysis and comparison that the proposed scheme exhibits enhanced efficiency in contrast to related schemes, including the scheme of Chen et al. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cryptanalysis and security enhancement of a robust two‐factor authentication and key agreement protocol

Two‐factor user authentication scheme allows a user to use a smart card and a password to achieve mutual authentication and establish a session key between a server and a user. In 2012, Chen et al. showed that the scheme of Sood et al. does not achieve mutual authentication and is vulnerable to off‐line password guessing and smart card stolen attacks. They also found that another scheme proposed by Song is vulnerable to similar off‐line password guessing and smart card stolen attacks. They further proposed an improved scheme. In this paper, we first show that the improved scheme of Chen et al. still suffers from off‐line password guessing and smart card stolen attacks, does not support perfect forward secrecy, and lacks the fairness of session key establishment. We then propose a new security‐enhanced scheme and show its security and authentication using the formal verification tool ProVerif, which is based on applied pi calculus. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Improvement of robust smart‐card‐based password authentication scheme

Smart‐card‐based password authentication scheme is one of the commonly used mechanisms to prevent unauthorized service and resource access and to remove the potential security threats over the insecure networks and has been investigated extensively in the last decade. Recently, Chen et al. proposed a smart‐card‐based password authentication scheme and claimed that the scheme can withstand offline password guessing attacks even if the information stored in the smart card is extracted by the adversary. However, we observe that the scheme of Chen et al. is insecure against offline password guessing attacks in this case. To remedy this security problem, we propose an improved authentication protocol, which inherits the merits of the scheme of Chen et al. and is free from the security flaw of their scheme. Compared with the previous schemes, our improved scheme provides more security guarantees while keeping efficiency. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cryptanalysis of a dynamic identity‐based remote user authentication scheme with verifiable password update

In the authentication scheme, it is important to ensure that the user's identity changed dynamically with the different sessions, which can protect the user's privacy information from being tracked. Recently, Chang et al. proposed an untraceable dynamic identity‐based remote user authentication scheme with verifiable password update. However, our analysis show that the property of untraceability can easily be broken by the legal user of the system. Besides, we find the scheme of Chang et al. vulnerable to offline password guessing attack, impersonation attack, stolen smart card attack, and insider attack. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An improved password‐based authentication scheme for session initiation protocol using smart cards without verification table

Authentication schemes have been widely deployed access control and mobility management in various communication networks. Especially, the schemes that are based on multifactor authentication such as on password and smart card come to be more practical. One of the standard authentication schemes that have been widely used for secure communication over the Internet is session initiation protocol (SIP). The original authentication scheme proposed for SIP was vulnerable to some crucial security weaknesses. To overcome the security problems, various improved authentication schemes have been developed, especially based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). Very recently, Zhang et al . proposed an improved authentication scheme for SIP based on ECC using smart cards to overcome the security flaws of the related protocols. Zhang et al . claimed that their protocol is secure against all known security attacks. However, this paper indicates that Zhang et al . protocol is still insecure against impersonation attack. We show that an active attacker can easily masquerade as a legal server to fool users. As a remedy, we also improve Zhang et al . protocol by imposing a little extra computation cost. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A lightweight password‐based authentication protocol using smart card

With its simplicity and feasibility, password‐based remote user authentication becomes a popular way to control remote access to network. These years, numerous password‐based authentication schemes have been proposed. Recently, Maitra et al proposed a smart card–based scheme which claims to be resistant to various attacks. Unfortunately, we found some important flaws in this scheme. Therefore, in this paper, we will demonstrate that the scheme of Maitra et al is not secure enough as claimed: neither resisting against off‐line password guessing attack and insider attack nor preserve forward secrecy. To overcome those flaws, we put forward an improved new scheme which not only is resistant to all known attacks but also provides many attractive attributes, such as user revocation and re‐register. Also, we compared the scheme with other related schemes, the result proved the superiority of our scheme. Particularly, we show a new way (beyond the conventional Deffie‐Hellman approach) to achieve forward secrecy. Furthermore, we put some efforts into exploring the design principle of authentication schemes.     

A secure and enhanced elliptic curve cryptography‐based dynamic authentication scheme using smart card

In remote system security, 2‐factor authentication is one of the security approaches and provides fundamental protection to the system. Recently, numerous 2‐factor authentication schemes are proposed. In 2014, Troung et al proposed an enhanced dynamic authentication scheme using smart card mainly to provide anonymity, secure mutual authentication, and session key security. By the analysis of Troung et al's scheme, we observed that Troung et al' s scheme does not provide user anonymity, perfect forward secrecy, server's secret key security and does not allow the user to choose his/her password. We also identified that Troung et al's scheme is vulnerable to replay attack. To fix these security weaknesses, a robust authentication scheme is proposed and analyzed using the formal verification tool for measuring the robustness. From the observation of computational efficiency of the proposed scheme, we conclude that the scheme is more secure and easy to implement practically.     

A secure and efficient identity‐based mutual authentication scheme with smart card using elliptic curve cryptography

The e‐commerce has got great development in the past decades and brings great convenience to people. Users can obtain all kinds of services through e‐commerce platform with mobile device from anywhere and at anytime. To make it work well, e‐commerce platform must be secure and provide privacy preserving. To achieve this goal, Islam et al. proposed a dynamic identity‐based remote user mutual authentication scheme with smart card using Elliptic Curve Cryptography(ECC). Islam et al claimed that the security of their scheme was good enough to resist various attacks. However, we demonstrate that their scheme is vulnerable to insider attack and suffers from off‐line password guessing attack if smart card is compromised. To overcome the deficiencies, we present an improved scheme over Islam's scheme. The security proof and analysis shows that our scheme can also provide user anonymity and mutual authentication, and the security is enough to against relay attack, impersonation attack, and other common secure attackers. The performance analysis shows that the proposed scheme is more efficient than Islam et al's scheme.     

On the security of a dynamic identity‐based remote user authentication scheme with verifiable password update

Recently, Chang et al. [Chang Y, Tai W, Chang H. Untraceable dynamic identity‐based remote user authentication scheme with verifiable password update. International Journal of Communication Systems 2013; doi:10.1002/dac.2552] proposed a dynamic identity‐based remote user authentication scheme with verifiable password update. They also proved that their scheme could withstand various attacks. Unfortunately, by proposing concrete attacks, we show that their scheme is vulnerable to three kinds of attacks. We also point out that their scheme cannot provide untraceability. The analysis shows that the scheme of Chang et al. is not suitable for practical applications. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An improved authentication scheme for mobile satellite communication systems

Recently, Lee et al. proposed a simple and efficient authentication scheme for mobile satellite communication systems. However, we find that their scheme is vulnerable to the smart card loss attack, the denial of service attack and the replay attack. To overcome the weaknesses of Lee et al.'s scheme, we proposed an authentication scheme for mobile satellite communication systems to improve security. The proposed scheme possesses the essential properties and security requirements, which should be considered for the authentication scheme of mobile satellite communication systems. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Security flaws in two improved remote user authentication schemes using smart cards

Understanding security failures of cryptographic protocols is the key to both patching existing protocols and designing future schemes. In this paper, we analyze two recent proposals in the area of password‐based remote user authentication using smart cards. First, we point out that the scheme of Chen et al. cannot achieve all the claimed security goals and report its following flaws: (i) it is vulnerable to offline password guessing attack under their nontamper resistance assumption of the smart cards; and (ii) it fails to provide forward secrecy. Then, we analyze an efficient dynamic ID‐based scheme without public‐key operations introduced by Wen and Li in 2012. This proposal attempts to overcome many of the well‐known security and efficiency shortcomings of previous schemes and supports more functionalities than its counterparts. Nevertheless, Wen–Li's protocol is vulnerable to offline password guessing attack and denial of service attack, and fails to provide forward secrecy and to preserve user anonymity. Furthermore, with the security analysis of these two schemes and our previous protocol design experience, we put forward three general principles that are vital for designing secure smart‐card‐based password authentication schemes: (i) public‐key techniques are indispensable to resist against offline password guessing attack and to preserve user anonymity under the nontamper resistance assumption of the smart card; (ii) there is an unavoidable trade‐off when fulfilling the goals of local password update and resistance to smart card loss attack; and (iii) at least two exponentiation (respectively elliptic curve point multiplication) operations conducted on the server side are necessary for achieving forward secrecy. The cryptanalysis results discourage any practical use of the two investigated schemes and are important for security engineers to make their choices correctly, whereas the proposed three principles are valuable to protocol designers for advancing more robust schemes. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Security Enhanced Anonymous User Authenticated Key Agreement Scheme Using Smart Card

Nowadays, the password-based remote user authentication mechanism using smart card is one of the simplest and convenient authentication ways to ensure secure communications over the public network environments. Recently, Liu et al. proposed an efficient and secure smart card based password authentication scheme. However, we find that Liu et al.’s scheme is vulnerable to the off-line password guessing attack and user impersonation attack. Furthermore, it also cannot provide user anonymity. In this paper, we cryptanalyze Liu et al.’s scheme and propose a security enhanced user authentication scheme to overcome the aforementioned problems. Especially, in order to preserve the user anonymity and prevent the guessing attack, we use the dynamic identity technique. The analysis shows that the proposed scheme is more secure and efficient than other related authentication schemes.     

Design of a user anonymous password authentication scheme without smart card

Recently, Jiang et al. and He et al. independently found security problems in Chen et al.'s remote user authentication scheme for non‐tamper‐proof storage devices like Universal Serial Bus stick and proposed improvements. Nonetheless, we detect that the schemes proposed by Jiang et al. and He et al. overlook a user's privacy. We also observe that Jiang et al.'s scheme is vulnerable to insider attack and denial of service attacks and lacks forward secrecy. We point out that the password changing facility in He et al.'s scheme is equivalent to undergoing registration, whereas in Jiang et al.'s scheme, it is unsuitable. Moreover, the login phase of both the schemes is incapable to prevent the use of wrong password leading to the computation of an unworkable login request. Therefore, we design a new scheme with user anonymity to surmount the identified weaknesses. Without adding much in communication/computational cost, our scheme provides more security characteristics and keeps the merits of the original schemes. As compared with its predecessor schemes, the proposed scheme stands out as a more apt user authentication method for common storage devices. We have also presented a formal proof of security of the proposed scheme based on the logic proposed by Burrows, Abadi and Needham (BAN logic). Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An authentication and key agreement protocol for satellite communications

In 2009 and 2011, Chen et al. and Lasc et al. proposed two separate authentication schemes for mobile satellite communication systems. Unfortunately, their schemes are unable to protect security in the event of smart card loss. In this paper, we propose a novel version that resists common malicious attacks and improves both the schemes of Chen et al. and Lasc et al. The security of our scheme is based on the discrete logarithm problem and one‐way hash function. A nonce mechanism is also applied to prevent replay attack. Furthermore, our scheme is more efficient than related schemes and thus more suitable for being implemented in satellite communication systems. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于智能卡的动态身份认证机制

由于每次登录时用户提交的认证信息都是固定不变的,传统的口令认证机制容易遭受回放攻击。本文根据一个关于互素数的定理,提出了一种基于智能卡的动态身份认证机制。用户每次登录时,智能卡根据从服务器发来的challenge和事先嵌入智能卡的参数信息,为合法用户计算当前的认证信息。由于每次用户提交的认证信息都是动态可变的,从而有效地防止了回放攻击。     

A new authenticated key agreement for session initiation protocol

The session initiation protocol (SIP) is an authentication protocol used in 3G mobile networks. In 2009, Tsai proposed an authenticated key agreement scheme as an enhancement to SIP. Yoon et al. later pointed out that the scheme of Tsai is vulnerable to off‐line password guessing attack, Denning–Sacco attack, and stolen‐verifier attack and does not support perfect forward secrecy (PFS). Yoon et al. further proposed a new scheme with PFS. In this paper, we show that the scheme of Yoon et al. is still vulnerable to stolen‐verifier attack and may also suffer from off‐line password guessing attack. We then propose several countermeasures for solving these problems. In addition, we propose a new security‐enhanced authentication scheme for SIP. Our scheme also maintains low computational complexity. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An anonymous biometric‐based remote user‐authenticated key agreement scheme for multimedia systems

We analyze the security of the Li et al . authentication scheme and show its vulnerability to off‐line password‐guessing and replay attacks. We design a new anonymous authentication scheme. The proposed scheme not only removes the drawback of the scheme of the Li et al . scheme but also protects user's anonymity. Moreover, we show validity of our proposed scheme using Burrows, Abadi, and Needham logic. Our scheme is comparable in terms of the communication and computational overhead with related schemes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于智能卡和密码保护的WSN远程用户安全认证方案

针对无线传感器网络（WSN）用户远程安全认证问题,分析现有方案的不足,提出一种新颖的基于智能卡的WSN远程用户认证方案。通过用户、网关节点和传感器节点之间的相互认证来验证用户和节点的合法性,并结合动态身份标识来抵抗假冒攻击、智能卡被盗攻击、服务拒绝攻击、字典攻击和重放攻击。同时对用户信息进行匿名保护,且用户能够任意修改密码。性能比较结果表明,该方案具有较高的安全性能,且具有较小的计算开销。     

An improved lightweight multiserver authentication scheme

Multiserver authentication complies with the up‐to‐date requirements of Internet services and latest applications. The multiserver architecture enables the expedient authentication of subscribers on an insecure channel for the delivery of services. The users rely on a single registration of a trusted third party for the procurement of services from various servers. Recently, Chen and Lee, Moon et al, and Wang et al presented multiserver key agreement schemes that are found to be vulnerable to many attacks according to our analysis. The Chen and Lee scheme was found susceptible to impersonation attack, trace attack, stolen smart card attack exposing session key, key‐compromise impersonation attack, and inefficient password modification. The Moon et al is susceptible to stolen card attack leading to further attacks, ie, identity guessing, key‐compromise impersonation attack, user impersonation attack, and session keys disclosure, while Wang et al is also found to be prone to trace attack, session‐specific temporary information attack, key‐compromise information attack, and privileged insider attack leading to session key disclosure and user impersonation attacks. We propose an improved protocol countering the indicated weaknesses of these schemes in an equivalent cost. Our scheme demonstrates automated and security analysis on the basis of Burrows‐Abadi‐Needham logic and also presents the performance evaluation for related schemes.     

Secure Remote User Mutual Authentication Scheme with Key Agreement for Cloud Environment

Authentication schemes are widely used mechanisms to thwart unauthorized access of resources over insecure networks. Several smart card based password authentication schemes have been proposed in the literature. In this paper, we demonstrate the security limitations of a recently proposed password based authentication scheme, and show that their scheme is still vulnerable to forgery and offline password guessing attacks and it is also unable to provide user anonymity, forward secrecy and mutual authentication. With the intention of fixing the weaknesses of that scheme, we present a secure authentication scheme. We show that the proposed scheme is invulnerable to various attacks together with attacks observed in the analyzed scheme through both rigorous formal and informal security analysis. Furthermore, the security analysis using the widely-accepted Real-Or-Random (ROR) model ensures that the proposed scheme provides the session key (SK) security. Finally, we carry out the performance evaluation of the proposed scheme and other related schemes, and the result favors that the proposed scheme provides better trade-off among security and performance as compared to other existing related schemes.