Improved authenticated multiple-key agreement protocol without using conventional one-way function

Abstract

An authenticated multiple-key agreement protocol enables two entities to authenticate each other and construct multiple common keys in a two-pass interaction. Since Harn and Lin proposed the first multiple key-agreement without using a conventional hash function, there are several works in the literature. In 2001, Yen, Sun, and Hwang proposed an improved scheme that adopted the system timestamp to detect the replay message. Here, the authors show that an impersonator can easily forge message without detection, and can establish common session keys with the communicating party. To overcome the weakness, we propose an improved scheme. Compared with Harn-Lin’s scheme and the previous variants, our scheme achieves better key utilization.