title: Security enhanced user authentication protocol for wireless sensor networks using elliptic curves cryptography.
abstract: Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of sensors, gateways and users. Sensors are widely distributed to monitor various conditions, such as temperature, sound, speed and pressure but they have limited computational ability and energy. To reduce the resource use of sensors and enhance the security of WSNs, various user authentication protocols have been proposed. In 2011, Yeh et al. first proposed a user authentication protocol based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) for WSNs. However, it turned out that Yeh et al.'s protocol does not provide mutual authentication, perfect forward secrecy, and key agreement between the user and sensor. Later in 2013, Shi et al. proposed a new user authentication protocol that improves both security and efficiency of Yeh et al.'s protocol. However, Shi et al.'s improvement introduces other security weaknesses. In this paper, we show that Shi et al.'s improved protocol is vulnerable to session key attack, stolen smart card attack, and sensor energy exhausting attack. In addition, we propose a new, security-enhanced user authentication protocol using ECC for WSNs.
authors.affiliation: College of Information and Communication Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Jangangu, Suwonsi, Gyeonggido 440-746, Korea. yschoi@security.re.kr.
authors.forename: Younsung
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.affiliation: College of Information and Communication Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Jangangu, Suwonsi, Gyeonggido 440-746, Korea. dhlee@security.re.kr.
authors.forename: Donghoon
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: College of Information and Communication Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Jangangu, Suwonsi, Gyeonggido 440-746, Korea. jykim@security.re.kr.
authors.forename: Jiye
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: College of Information and Communication Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Jangangu, Suwonsi, Gyeonggido 440-746, Korea. jwjung@security.re.kr.
authors.forename: Jaewook
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Jung
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Engineering, Konkuk University, 268 Chungwondaero, Chungju, Chungcheongbukdo 380-701, Korea. jhnam@kku.ac.kr.
authors.forename: Junghyun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Nam
authors.affiliation: College of Information and Communication Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Jangangu, Suwonsi, Gyeonggido 440-746, Korea. dhwon@security.re.kr.
authors.forename: Dongho
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Won