A Secure and Efficient Multi-Factor Mutual Certificateless Authentication with Key Agreement Protocol for Mobile Client-Server Environment on ECC without the third-party

Liling Cao, Wancheng Ge
2016 International Journal of Security and Its Applications  
Authentication with key agreement (AKA) protocols are implemented to provide identity authentication and session keys for communication entities. In order to reduce the heavy trust reliance on key generator center (KGC) in identity based AKA protocols, a certificateless based AKA (CLAKA) protocol for client-server environment without the third-party (i.e., KGC) is introduced in this paper. The proposed protocol is constructed based on elliptic curve cryptosystem (ECC) and multi-factor
more » ... s (such as password, biometrics, and smart card). Moreover, security proof based on BAN-logic is carried out and shows that our protocol can provide mutual authentication, user anonymity, dynamic identity and perfect forward security, and resist to user impersonation attack, server spoofing attack and privileged insider attack. Meanwhile, security and efficiency analysis shows that our proposed protocol outperforms the previous related ones. To reduce the heavy trust reliance on KGC, Al-Riyami and Paterson[1] presented a novel concept called certificateless public key cryptography (CLPKC), in which longterm private key of the user is calculated from a secret key of the user, while partial private key of the user is issued by KGC. In this way, CLPKC based AKA (CLAKA) protocols can eliminate the complex certificate management burden and the insecure key escrow problem, which respectively consists in TPKI based and ID-based AKA protocols. Previously, researchers used the following intractable computational problems to construct AKA protocols: (i) Large Number Factorization (LNF) problem is applied to RSA based authentication protocols. (ii) Quadratic Residue (QR) problem based protocols [2, 3] are equivalent in complexity to the LNF-based ones in polynomial time. (iii) Discrete Logarithm (DL) problem: the famous ElGamal cryptosystem based protocols [4, 5] fall into this category. (iv) Diffie Hellman (DH) problem is adopted in protocol [6] . However, traditional protocols in these types require expensive computation cost for modular exponentiation operations. To solve such problem, various elliptic curve cryptosystem (ECC) based AKA protocols are proposed, which offer better performances in mobile devices. Compared with the aforementioned traditional protocols, ECC based ones can provide greater security with a smaller key size. However, previous research works used bilinear pairing [7] [8], which was also an expensive operation, to construct ECC based protocols. Therefore, many pairing free ECC based AKA protocols [9, 10] have been put forward to improve the efficiency under the following problems: (v) Elliptic Curve Computational Diffie Hellman (ECCDH) problem and (vi) Elliptic Curve Decision Diffie Hellman (ECDDH) problem. Besides, (vii) Hash Function (HF) with collision free and indirection performance, which shows the low complexity in computation, has been extensive used, as well. Accordingly, numerous protocols based on the combination problems of above (i)~(vii) are then proposed to improve the security [11] . For the above, CLAKA protocols without pairings on ECC gradually become a research hotspot. Most researchers have been investigating secure and efficient CLAKA protocols under different environments such as online contracts and online meetings for two-part or three parties [12] [13] [14] . However, all these CLAKA protocols suppose that a KGC is needed in the authentication system. But in many practical applications under client-server environment, the third-party authority (i.e., KGC) can be replaced by the server. To the best of the authors' knowledge, the CLAKA protocol under client-server environment without the third-party (i.e., KGC) is seldom discussed. In another way, remote AKA protocols under mobile client-server environment can be implemented on the following three categories (i) knowledge based, (ii) object based, and (iii) biometrics based. However, protocols in type (i), such as password based ones, are simple, convenient, but vulnerable to leaking attacks. Object based protocols, which base on physical possession such as smart card, may be insecure when the smart card is lost. Though protocols in type (iii) are superior to others, because biometric keys such as fingerprints cannot be forgotten or lost, they are also insecure because biometric samples can be captured in a system database [15] . Absolutely, multi-factor authentication protocols, which base on passwords, smart cards and fingerprints, outperform those in type (i)~(iii) [16] . Although plenty of multi-factor AKA protocols [17] [18] [19] [20] have been proposed, few of them adopts the certificateless public key cryptography. Moreover, most of them cannot resist the smart privileged insider attack introduced by us. Section 5 describes the attacks on some of the existing multi-factor AKA protocols. According to the above descriptions, in order to satisfy the requirement of practical applications and reduce the heavy trust reliance on KGC, we propose a multi-factor mutual CLAKA protocol for mobile client-server environment on ECC without the
doi:10.14257/ijsia.2016.10.10.20 fatcat:4ouqcztglngtbcniwpapvnsufq