A Novel User Authentication Scheme Based on QR-Code

Abstract

User authentication is one of the fundamental procedures to ensure secure communications and share system resources over an insecure public network channel.  Thus, a simple and efficient authentication mechanism is required for securing the network system in the real environment. In general, the password-based authentication mechanism provides the basic capability to prevent unauthorized access. Especially, the purpose of the one-time password is to make it more difficult to gain unauthorized access to restricted resources. Instead of using the password file as conventional authentication systems, many researchers have devoted to implement various one-time password schemes using smart cards, time-synchronized token or short message service in order to reduce the risk of tampering and maintenance cost.  However, these schemes are impractical because of the far from ubiquitous hardware devices or the infrastructure requirements. To remedy these weaknesses, the attraction of the QR-code technique can be introduced into our one-time password authentication protocol. Not the same as before, the proposed scheme based on QR code not only eliminates the usage of the password verification table, but also is a cost effective solution since most internet users already have mobile phones. For this reason, instead of carrying around a separate hardware token for each security domain, the superiority of handiness benefit from the mobile phone makes our approach more practical and convenient.