An enhanced and provably secure authentication protocol using Chebyshev chaotic maps for multi-server environment

Multi-server authentication, being a crucial component of remote communication, provides the ease of one-time registration to users from a centralized registration authority. Therefore, the users could avail the offered services after getting authenticated of any service provider using the same registration credentials. In recent years, many multi-server authentication protocols have been demonstrated. Nonetheless, the existing schemes do not meet the security and efficiency requirements of the time. Recently, Chuang et al. presented a multi-server biometric authentication protocol which was later crypt-analysed and improved by Lin et al. with the identification of few attacks. Later, we discover that Lin et al.’s protocol is still prone to replay attack, privileged insider attack, trace attack, de-synchronization attack and key-compromise impersonation attacks. In this study, we present a multi-server authentication protocol which is not only comparable with Lin et al.’s scheme but also efficient than other state-of-the-art multi-server protocols. The security properties of our scheme are proved using formal analysis and evaluated with automated verification tool based on ProVerif.

Wireless sensor network (WSN) have been applied in many different areas. Mutual authentication is an important service in WSN. In 2010, Chen and Shih proposed a robust mutual authentication (RMA) protocol for WSN. However, this paper points out that Chen-Shih's RMA protocol has some drawbacks: (1) user impersonation attacks by a malicious registered user, (2) GW-node impersonation attacks by a malicious registered user, (3) sensor node impersonation attacks by a malicious registered user, (4) privileged insider attacks, and (5) time synchronization problem.

User anonymity is one of the key security features of an authenticated key agreement especially for communicating messages via an insecure network. Owing to the better properties and higher performance of chaotic theory, the chaotic maps have been introduced into the security schemes, and hence numerous key agreement schemes have been put forward under chaotic-maps. Recently, Xie et al. released an enhanced scheme under Farash et al.’s scheme and claimed their improvements could withstand the security loopholes pointed out in the scheme of Farash et al., i.e., resistance to the off-line password guessing and user impersonation attacks. Nevertheless, through our careful analysis, the improvements were released by Xie et al. still could not solve the problems troubled in Farash et al‥ Besides, Xie et al.’s improvements failed to achieve the user anonymity and the session key security. With the purpose of eliminating the security risks of the scheme of Xie et al., we design an anonymous password-based three-party authenticated key agreement under chaotic maps. Both the formal analysis and the formal security verification using AVISPA are presented. Also, BAN logic is used to show the correctness of the enhancements. Furthermore, we also demonstrate that the design thwarts most of the common attacks. We also make a comparison between the recent chaotic-maps based schemes and our enhancements in terms of performance.

The simple password based authentication techniques have been evolving into more secure and advanced protocols, capable of countering the advanced breed of threats. Following this development, the multi-server authentication (MSA), lets subscribers the provision of services from various service providers out of a single registration performed initially. The user seeks to register from registration centre first, and could avail a range of services onwards. The research efforts on MSA based framework, for making it lightweight and security resilient, has been going on a reasonable pace. However, yet we have not come up with a framework that can be relied upon for deployment in an access network bearing nodes that demand low computational cost. Recently, in this regard, Tsai and Lo presented a chaotic map-based multi-server authentication protocol. However, the Tsai and Lo scheme is found vulnerable to key-compromise impersonation attack, Bergamo et al. and password guessing attack by Lu et al. In return, Lu et al. presented a model countering the flaws of Tsai and Lo scheme. We review both schemes and found that Tsai et al. is still vulnerable to more threats, and at the same time, we demonstrate that Lu et al. is also vulnerable to RC-spoofing attack, replay attack, anonymity failure and bears some technical flaws. In this paper, we propose a secure and efficient scheme improved upon Tsai et al. protocol. Besides, this study work presents the formal security analysis using BAN logic and performance efficiency has also been evaluated against contemporary protocols.

Password-based user authentication service is widely used in Internet. Most of the password-based authentication protocols are constructed under the single-server structure that a authencitation server stores cleartext passwords or verification data derived from password and responds to users' authentication request. The security of single-server authentication system is very fragile. In particular, when the server is comprimised, all of users' verification data is exposed to the attacker. Nowadays, development of mobile Internet leads the demand of authentication on roaming device. In this scenario, easily memorable short password and simple secret is accepted by most people despite of its security limitation. The utilization of short password worsens the situation of single-server authentication protocol. Attackers controlling the system can launch off-line dictionary attack from internal of server side to obtain users' original password. Multi-server authentication protocols can improve the security of verification data by distributed storing data on the cluster. This approach increases the difficulty of internal attack and guarantees security even if a portion of servers in the cluster are controlled by adversary. But in practice, There are some problems in existing multi-server protocols. For example, communicating with multiple servers brings extra network and computational burden to client device. To address these problems, in this paper we propose a novel password-based multi-server authenication protocol which not only require less computation on client device but remain functional and secure even if adversary controls some servers and forces them collude to attack our protocol.

Wireless medical sensor networks (WMSNs) are used in remote medical service environments to provide patients with convenient healthcare services. In a WMSN environment, patients wear a device that collects their health information and transmits the information via a gateway. Then, doctors make a diagnosis regarding the patient, utilizing the health information. However, this information can be vulnerable to various security attacks because the information is exchanged via an insecure channel. Therefore, a secure authentication scheme is necessary for WMSNs. In 2021, Masud et al. proposed a lightweight and anonymity-preserving user authentication scheme for healthcare environments. We discover that Masud et al.’s scheme is insecure against offline password guessing, user impersonation, and privileged insider attacks. Furthermore, we find that Masud et al.’s scheme cannot ensure user anonymity. To address the security vulnerabilities of Masud et al.’s scheme, we propose a three-factor-based mutual authentication scheme with a physical unclonable function (PUF). The proposed scheme is secure against various security attacks and provides anonymity, perfect forward secrecy, and mutual authentication utilizing biometrics and PUF. To prove the security features of our scheme, we analyze the scheme using informal analysis, Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, the Real-or-Random (RoR) model, and Automated Verification of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) simulation. Furthermore, we estimate our scheme’s security features, computation costs, communication costs, and energy consumption compared with the other related schemes. Consequently, we demonstrate that our scheme is suitable for WMSNs.

The concept of two-factor multiserver authentication protocol was developed to avoid multiple number of registrations using multiple smart-cards and passwords. Recently, a variety of two-factor multiserver authentication protocols have been developed. It is observed that the existing RSA-based multiserver authentication protocols are not suitable in terms of computation complexities and security attacks. To provide lower complexities and security resilience against known attacks, this article proposes a two-factor (password and smart-card) user authentication protocol with the RSA cryptosystem for multiserver environments. The comprehensive security discussion proved that the known security attacks are eliminated in our protocol. Besides, our protocol supports session key agreement and mutual authentication between the application server and the user. We analyze the proof of correctness of the mutual authentication and freshness of session key using the BAN logic model. The experimental outcomes obtained through simulation of the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) S/W show that our protocol is secured. We consider the computation, communication, and storage costs and the comparative explanations show that our protocol is flexible and efficient compared with protocols. In addition, our protocol offers security resilience against known attacks and provides lower computation complexities than existing protocols. Additionally, the protocol offers password change facility to the authorized user.

Remote user authentication schemes are commonly used for communication between authorized users and remote servers over an insecure network. Due to its simplicity and convenience this method is widely used in many environments, such as sensor networks or remote host login systems. In recent years, several remote user authentication schemes using smart cards have been proposed. Recently, Singhal and Ramaiya proposed an efficient smart card-based authentication scheme using hash function. They claimed that their scheme could withstand several kinds of attacks, including off-line password guessing attacks, user impersonation attacks, privileged-insider attacks, etc. However, there are some vulnerabilities in Singhal and Ramaiya's scheme. It was found their scheme could not withstand off-line password guessing attack and user impersonation attack. Besides, their scheme cannot achieve perfect forward secrecy, and also fail to preserve user anonymity. In this paper, we propose a security enhanced user authentication scheme to resolve the aforementioned weaknesses. Our proposed scheme is also based on the hash function and our analysis shows that this scheme is more efficient and secure than previous schemes.

Authentication and key agreement (AKA) provides flexible and convenient sercices. Most traditional AKA protocols are designed to apply in single-server environment, where a user has to register at different servers to access different types of network services and the user have to remember or manage a large number of usernames and passwords. Later, multi-server AKA protocols resolve the repeated registration problem of single-server AKA protocols, where a user can access different servers to get different services using a single registration and the same username and password. Recently, in 2015, Lu et al proposed a light-weight ID based authentication and key agreement protocol for multi-server architecture, referred to as LAKA protocol. They claimed their protocol can overcome all shortcomings which existed in Xue et al’s protocol. Unfortunately, our further research shows that LAKA protocol still suffers from server spoofing attack, stolen smart card attack etc. To overcome the weakness of LAKA protocol, an energy-efficient and lightweight authentication and key agreement protocol for multi-server architecture is proposed (abbreviated to ELAKA). The ELAKA protocol not only provides the security features declared by LAKA protocol, but also has some other advantages. First, the ELAKA protocol can realize authentication and key agreement just by three handshakes with extremely low communication cost and computation cost between users and servers, which can achieve a delicate balance of security and performance. Second, ELAKA protocol can enable the user enjoy the remote services with privacy protection. Finally the ELAKA protocol is proved secure against known possible attacks by using BAN logic. As a result, these features make ELAKA protocol is very suitable for computation-limited mobile devices (such as smartphone, PAD, tablets) in comparison to other related existing protocols.

With the rapid growth of wireless medical sensor networks (WMSNs) based healthcare applications, protecting both the privacy and security from illegitimate users, are major concern issues since patient’s precise information is vital for the proper diagnosis procedure. So, authentication protocol is one of the efficient mechanisms to deal with trustworthy and authentic users. Several authentication protocols have been proposed in WMSNs environment. However, the most of these protocols are so susceptible to security threats and not suitable for practical use. In this article, recently proposed Amin et al.’s authentication scheme is reviewed and some vulnerabilities like off-line password guessing attack, user impersonation attack, known session-key temporary information attack, the revelation of secret parameters, and identity guessing attack are pointed out. To overcome all the above mentioned vulnerabilities, we have proposed an enhanced three-factor based remote user authentication protocol in WMSNs environment. Further, the proposed protocol is validated using Burrows–Abadi–Needham logic and then simulated using Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications tool. Moreover, the security analysis ensures that the proposed protocol is well protected from various types of malicious attacks. In addition, the performance evaluation shows better efficiency and suitability of our protocol over other related protocols.

This paper presents a survey on various security frameworks which aim to secure Hadoop clusters and the files stored there. Most of the Hadoop platforms rely on Kerberos Authentication Protocol for user authentication. It is known that Kerberos itself has some vulnerabilities like Password Guessing Attacks, Single Point of Failure, Insider Attacks, and Time Synchronization problems. A new authentication framework that can address most of the identified issues and is computationally feasible than other schemes is introduced in this paper. The proposed framework is based on Secure Remote Password Protocol (SRP), Threshold Cryptography, and Blockchain Technology. The system focus on eradicating Password Guessing Attacks and Single Point of Failure in Kerberos Enabled Hadoop Clusters. The analysis results strengthen the claim that the proposed scheme beats the others in terms of computational efficiency and feasibility while offering the same security features. The paper is concluded with directions for future work.

Over the last twenty years, chaos-based encryption has been an increasingly popular way to encrypt and decrypt data using nonlinear dynamics and deterministic chaos. Discrete chaotic systems based on iterative maps have gotten a lot of interest because of their simplicity and speed. In this paper, three kinds of chaotic maps are utilized to build a digital image encryption strategy depending on a chaotic system. These chaotic maps are the logistic map, Arnold Cat’s map, and Baker’s map. In addition to using the triple data encryption standard (3DES) encryption scheme with the chaotic maps mentioned. The results of the experiments revealed that the suggested digital image encryption technique is both efficient and secure, making it ideal for usage in insecure networks. The transmission control protocol (TCP)/internet protocol (IP) protocol was used for the purpose of transferring data from server to client through the network and vice versa.

SE-AKA: A secure and efficient group authentication and key agreement protocol for LTE networks

Recently, Tsai et al. have proposed a multi-server authentication protocol. They claimed their protocol is secure and can withstand various attacks. But we found some security loopholes in the protocol. Accordingly, the current paper demonstrates that Tsai’s protocol does not provide perfect forward secrecy and is susceptible to a Denning-Sacco attack and Server spoofing. We then present an enhanced protocol to isolate such problems.

Because sensor nodes are deployed in public areas, these sensors are easy to capture by adversaries. Once a sensor is stolen, the sensitive information stored in it is likely to be exposed. Accordingly, designing a secure authentication protocol should consider this issue. Sadri et al. recently proposed a two-factor authentication protocol with anonymity for wireless sensor networks. Unfortunately, we found that their protocol had a design flaw in the user and sensor authentication phase. Besides, their protocol can not resist stolen smart card attacks, sensor capture attacks, and user impersonation attacks. In addition, their protocol does not provide perfect forward security. This paper proposes a provably secure authentication to overcome these weaknesses and flaws. By comparing the security and performance of the proposed protocol with other related protocols, we find that our work has reasonable computation overhead and better security.