An efficient nonce-based authentication scheme with key agreement

Many authentication protocols using smart cards have been proposed recently. In this article, we propose an efficient nonce-based authentication (ENA) protocol with key agreement. Generally, nonce-based authentication schemes require verification tables in servers to authenticate users. In ENA, both verification tables and synchronized time-stamps are not required. Thus, ENA can be easily implemented in both users and servers. ENA also provides key agreement based on the nonce values generated in authentication. The ENA protocol has several features including: (1) no verification table is required in a server; (2) time synchronization is not needed between users and servers; (3) both the communication and computation cost are extremely low; (4) it provides mutual authentication between users and servers; (5) it supports session key agreement. (c) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.