Cryptanalysis on Four Two-Party Authentication Protocols

In this paper, we analyze four authentication protocols of Bindu et al., Goriparthi et al., Wang et al. and Holbl et al.. After investigation, we reveal several weaknesses of these schemes. First, Bindu et al.¡s protocol suffers from an insider impersonation attack if a malicious user obtains a lost smart card. Second, both Goriparthi et al.¡s and Wang et al.¡s protocols cannot withstand a DoS attack in the password change phase, i.e. an attacker can involve the phase to make user¡s password never be used in subsequent authentications. Third, Holbl et al.¡s protocol is vulnerable to an insider attack since a legal but malevolent user can deduce KGC¡s secret key. Keywordspassword authentication protocol; insider attack; denial-of-service attack; smart card lost problem; mutual authentication; man-in-the-middle attack