Comparative analysis of remote user authentication schemes based on external memory

Abstract

Because of recent availability of remote services and resources, remote user authentication becomes an essential component of all digital environment. Remote user login authentication is the process of validating the identity of a user. Users present their credentials, such as username and password, as evidence of their identity. The most practical and effectively implemented remote user authentication scheme is the smart card-based one, however, because it is expensive to acquire and operate smart card facilities, users may find it challenging to employ smart card authentication schemes in remote environments. Mobility and simplicity of acquisition—especially for remote access—are the benefits of using this external memory. Therefore, this research performs comparative analysis of these remote user authentication schemes based external memory. The schemes are first evaluated for security features and performance in terms of computation cost. The results of analysis shown that Buhari et al.’s scheme has the highest security feature and is the only scheme that uses light-weight tamper resistance client file, followed the reviewed Kumari et al.’s scheme which is the only scheme that handles user privacy. The most efficient scheme is Buhari et al.’s scheme followed by Rhee et al.’s scheme.