A new method for using hash functions to solve remote user authentication

Abstract

Recently, Peyravian and Zunic proposed the remote password authentication schemes only based on the collision-resistant hash function. The schemes are, therefore, easy to implement and simple to use. The attractive properties cause a series of discussion. Several security flaws are found and remedied. Unfortunately, most of the remedies either are insecure or violate the original advantages because of involving public-key cryptosystems or modular exponential operations. Hence, it is still a challenge to design a secure scheme abiding by the beneficial assumption of the Peyravian–Zunic schemes. The proposed scheme not only keeps the original advantages (user friendness and computational cheapness) but also highlights certain of valuable features, such as (1) mutual authentication (higher security level), (2) server’s ignorance of users’ passwords (further security guaranee to users, specially for financial services), (3) immunity from maintaining security-sensitive table (maintaining burden reduction to servers), and so forth.