Password-based user authentication and key distribution protocols for client–server applications

Abstract

Up to now, most of the literature on three-party authentication and key distribution protocols has focused on the environment in which two users (clients) establish a session key through an authentication server. In this paper, we discuss another environment in which a user (client) requests service from an application server through an authentication server. We propose two secure and efficient authentication protocols (KTAP: key transfer authentication protocol and KAAP: key agreement authentication protocol) to fit this environment. These two proposed protocols can be efficiently applied to various communication systems in distributed computing environments since they provide security, efficiency, and reliability.