ELAKA: Energy-Efficient and Lightweight Multi-Server Authentication and Key Agreement Protocol Based on Dynamic Biometrics

Abstract

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.