%0 Journal Article
%T Cryptanalysis and Security Improvements of ¡®Two-Factor User Authentication in Wireless Sensor Networks¡¯
%A Muhammad Khurram Khan
%A Khaled Alghathbar
%J Sensors
%D 2010
%I MDPI AG
%R 10.3390/s100302450
%X User authentication in wireless sensor networks (WSN) is a critical security issue due to their unattended and hostile deployment in the field. Since sensor nodes are equipped with limited computing power, storage, and communication modules; authenticating remote users in such resource-constrained environments is a paramount security concern. Recently, M.L. Das proposed a two-factor user authentication scheme in WSNs and claimed that his scheme is secure against different kinds of attack. However, in this paper, we show that the M.L. Das-scheme has some critical security pitfalls and cannot be recommended for real applications. We point out that in his scheme: users cannot change/update their passwords, it does not provide mutual authentication between gateway node and sensor node, and is vulnerable to gateway node bypassing attack and privileged-insider attack. To overcome the inherent security weaknesses of the M.L. Das-scheme, we propose improvements and security patches that attempt to fix the susceptibilities of his scheme. The proposed security improvements can be incorporated in the M.L. Das-scheme for achieving a more secure and robust two-factor user authentication in WSNs.
%K authentication
%K wireless sensor network
%K security
%K smart card
%K cryptanalysis
%U http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/10/3/2450