Anonymity is a desirable security feature in addition to providing user identification and key agreement during a user's login process. Recently, Yang et al., proposed an efficient user identification and key distribution protocol while preserving user anonymity. Their protocol addresses a weakness in the protocol proposed by Wu and Hsu. Unfortunately, Yang's protocol poses a vulnerability that can be exploited to launch a Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack. In this paper, we cryptanalyze Yang's protocol and present the DoS attack. We further secure their protocol by proposing a Secure Identification and Key agreement protocol with user Anonymity (SIKA) that overcomes the above limitation while achieving security features like identification, authentication, key agreement and user anonymity.
Kumar V. Mangipudi, Rajendra S. Katti