A Novel Threshold Distributed Authentication Scheme Using Bilinear Pairings

Abstract

User authentication is very important mechanism in computer network systems for preventing unauthorized network access. In recent years, the bilinear pairings have been found to be very useful in various applications in cryptography and have allowed us to construct new cryptographic primitives. In 2006, Das et al. proposed an identity-based remote user authentication scheme with smart cards using bilinear pairings. Unfortunately, their scheme is insecure against forgery attack. In this paper, we propose a (t, n) threshold distributed authentication scheme using the bilinear pairings with smart cards which needs at least t authentication servers to collaboratively authenticate the remote user. Our scheme makes some improvements from Das's scheme and is expanded to a multi-server environment in distributed networks. Based on the Computational Diffie-Hellman Problem, we show that the proposed scheme is secure against forgery attack and identity attack under the random oracle model.