A Secure User Authentication Protocol Based on ECC for Cloud Computing Environment

Cloud computing relies on on-demand sharing of the computing resources and data without the user's direct involvement in resource management over the network, but it has major security threats. Recently, an it is Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) based three-factor authentication and key negotiation protocol for fog computing has been discussed by Wazid et al. In this paper, we show that the Wazid et al.'s protocol requires high communication as well as storage cost, and also, it is susceptible to the denial-of-service attack, stolen smart card attack, and privileged insider attack. We further propose a new protocol that overcomes these problems. We carry out informal and formal security analysis and also simulate it using the it is Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications tool (AVISPA) to prove its robustness against the security threats. Its performance analysis illustrates that it is efficient and lightweight in comparison with the existing schemes.