A Simple and Secure Authentication and Key Establishment Protocol

Authentication of communicating entities and confidentiality of transmitted data are two important security properties in most of the applications, when communication media is a public (insecure) channel. One can design an authentication protocol based on password or public key, depending on applications requirement. In this paper, we present a password-based authentication and key establishment protocol. The protocol first authenticates communicating parties and then the communicating parties share a common transient secret key to establish a secure channel for transmitting data between them. The protocol is free from maintaining extra token (e.g., smart card) for users and does not require password/verifier table to validate users. Further, the protocol resists possible threats and provides efficiency for implementing in resource-constrained environments.