Password authentication based on fractal coding scheme. (English) Zbl 1264.94106

Al-Saidi, Nadia M. G.; Said, Mohamad Rushdan Md.; Othman, Wan Ainun M.

J. Appl. Math. 2012, Article ID 340861, 16 p. (2012).

Summary: Password authentication is a mechanism used to authenticate user identity over insecure communication channel. In this paper, a new method to improve the security of password authentication is proposed. It is based on the compression capability of the fractal image coding to provide an authorized user a secure access to registration and login process. In the proposed scheme, a hashed password string is generated and encrypted to be captured together with the user identity using text to image mechanisms. The advantage of fractal image coding is to be used to securely send the compressed image data through a non-secure communication channel to the server. The verification of client information with the database system is achieved in the server to authenticate the legal user. The encrypted hashed password in the decoded fractal image is recognized using optical character recognition. The authentication process is performed after a successful verification of the client identity by comparing the decrypted hashed password with those which was stored in the database system. The system is analyzed and discussed from the attacker’s viewpoint. A security comparison is performed to show that the proposed scheme provides an essential security requirement, while its efficiency makes it easier to be applied alone or in hybrid with other security methods. Computer simulation and statistical analysis are presented.

MSC:

94A62	Authentication, digital signatures and secret sharing
68P25	Data encryption (aspects in computer science)

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