Security Enhanced Anonymous User Authenticated Key Agreement Scheme Using Smart Card

Abstract

Nowadays, the password-based remote user authentication mechanism using smart card is one of the simplest and convenient authentication ways to ensure secure communications over the public network environments. Recently, Liu et al. proposed an efficient and secure smart card based password authentication scheme. However, we find that Liu et al.’s scheme is vulnerable to the off-line password guessing attack and user impersonation attack. Furthermore, it also cannot provide user anonymity. In this paper, we cryptanalyze Liu et al.’s scheme and propose a security enhanced user authentication scheme to overcome the aforementioned problems. Especially, in order to preserve the user anonymity and prevent the guessing attack, we use the dynamic identity technique. The analysis shows that the proposed scheme is more secure and efficient than other related authentication schemes.