AUTHENTICATION MECHANISM ENHANCEMENT UTILISING SECURE REPOSITORY FOR PASSWORDLESS HANDSHAKE

In this paper the idea of an enhanced security authentication procedure is presented. This procedure prohibits the transmission of the user’s password over the network while still providing the same authentication service. To achieve that, Kerberos Protocol and a secure password repository are adopted, namely a smart card. The conditional access to a smart card system provides a secure place to keep credentials safe. Then, by referencing to them through identifiers, an authentication system may perform its scope without revealing the secrets at all. This elevates the trustworthiness of the mechanism while at the same time it achieves to reduce the overhead of the authentication systems due to the elaborate encryptions procedures.