An anonymous and robust multi‐server authentication protocol using multiple registration servers

Abstract

SummaryThe concept of multi‐server authentication includes multiple numbers of application servers. The registration/control server is the central point in such environment to provide smooth services to a limited number of legitimate users. However, this type of environment is inappropriate to handle unlimited users since the number of users may grow, and thus, the response time may be very high. To eliminate these shortcomings, we have modified the existing multi‐server authentication architecture and then designed a new scheme by including multiregistration server technique that can provide a smooth environment to support unlimited number of users. The main aspect of our design is to provide a secure authentication environment for multi‐server application using password and smartcard so that the participants can securely communicate with each other. The simulation results are obtained by executing our protocol using AVISPA tool. The results provide concrete evidence about the security safety against active and passive attacks. Furthermore, the justification of correctness of the freshness of the session key negotiation and the mutual authentication between the participants has done been evaluated with the BAN logic model. The comprehensive comparative analysis justifies our argument that our protocol has better applicability in multi‐server environments compared to other protocols with similar nature.