Telecommunication Systems (2020) 75:259–271

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11235-020-00683-9

A secure n-secret based client authentication protocol for 802.11

WLANs
Pawan Kumar1 · Dinesh Kumar2

Published online: 15 June 2020

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020

Abstract
Authentication has strong impact on the overall security model of every information system. Various authentication techniques
are available for restricting the access of unauthorized users to the enterprise scale networks. IEEE 802.1X defines a secure
and reliable authentication framework for 802.11 WLANs, where Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) provides the
base to this architecture. EAP is a generic architectural framework which supports extensibility by incorporating the new and
improved authentication schemes, which are based on different types of credentials. Currently there exist a number of EAP
and Non-EAP methods with varying level of security and complexity. In this work, we have designed a new n-secret based
authentication scheme referred here as Personal Dialogue Based Authentication, for the client authentication to the network.
It is a Transport Layer Security (TLS) protected authentication protocol, which will be executed inside the secure TLS tunnel
for providing the privacy and credential security to the wireless client. The developed authentication protocol has a reasonable
set of features like; strong security, user privacy, simplicity and extensibility. For the formal analysis of the protocol we have
used SPAN–AVISAP model checker on Ubuntu platform for validating the realization of the specified security goals. The
experimental results obtained by simulation performed with the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and
Applications (AVISPA) tool shows that our protocol is efficient and secured.

Keywords Information security · Authentication · WLAN · EAP · 802.1X

1 Introduction i.e. biometric based, something we have i.e. token based or

something we know i.e. secret based [1]. Simple authentica-
Wireless technology is preferred choice for every network tion schemes use one of these authentication factors, while
because of its efficiency, flexibility and cost savings. Appli- the multifactor authentication schemes combine two or more
cations of wireless networks are evolving rapidly and all its authentication factors to make the system more secure and
security concerns are also getting resolved very quickly. As difficult to crack [2].
the information security is a highly dynamic area, it requires Wireless standards WPA2 and 802.11i offers the protec-
continuous up-gradation and advancement by the incorpo- tion against almost all identified WLAN attacks associated
ration of new methods and techniques. Authentication is an with privacy, integrity and authenticity in the wireless com-
essential component of every secure communication system. munication [3]. Keeping in view the importance of authen-
A well designed authentication scheme can protect a network tication in every network security model and to boost up the
from various potential threats. Almost all the authentica- authentication aspect of security an exclusive authentication
tion schemes are based on the theory of: something we are framework 802.1X was designed by the IEEE in the year
2004. This specialized authentication framework was devel-
B Dinesh Kumar oped for deployment in both type of environments wireless as
[email protected] well as wired LANs. This 802.1X port-based NAC (Network
Pawan Kumar Access Control) framework is based on the EAP (Extensible
[email protected] Authentication Protocol) [4].
1
In wireless communication systems, broadcasting nature
IKG PTU, Kapurthala, India
of channel demands more sophisticated authentication tech-
2 DAV Institute of Engineering and Technology, Jalandhar, niques for providing the security in communication. As there
India

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260 P. Kumar, D. Kumar

is no physical linkage among devices to define the member- After performing an intensive survey of existing authenti-
ship in a wireless networking setup, there exists no physical cation mechanisms used in WLANs, the idea was conceived
mechanism to restrict a device in the radio range from to design an authentication scheme that is on one hand as
accessing a wireless network. Wireless networks require easy as possible for the legitimate users of the network to gain
authentication and access control mechanism of diverse access, while on the other it’s as difficult as possible for some-
nature than deployed in their wired counterparts. Varieties of one who is not authorized to gain access. Our overall goal is
authentication methods have been devised for the WLANs, to develop a dynamic, lightweight and secure authentication
ranging from very simple open access to 802.1x authen- scheme for the enterprise grade networking environment, by
tication, all with their own pros and cons. Authentication integrating the simplicity of password based authentication
methods which are used for authenticating the clients can be methods and strength of certificate ones.
broadly divided into three categories namely; open authen-
tication, shared secret based authentication and certificate 1.2 Our contributions
based authentication. Open authentication method is suitable
for the networking environment, where ease of connectivity The major contribution and claims of this research are high-
is priority than the information security. Shared secret based lighted below:
authentication schemes are easy to implement and manage,
but are less secure and are vulnerable to various types of
attacks. In the third category there is a most secure X.509 1. We have pointed out that all the existing certificate-based
certificate based authentication. Certificate based authenti- client authentication protocols include high computation
cation schemes are most secure and highly difficult to forge, cost and incur high implementation and administrative
but the weak point of this method is, it is costly to deploy overhead. We have also analyzed that all the password
and manage certificates on client devices. based client authentication schemes are insecure against
known attacks.
2. Design and analysis of a lightweight and robust n-secrets
1.1 Motivation based authentication method for authenticating the wire-
less clients to the network. This method will be executed
As 802.11 WLAN technology evolved, a diverse set of within the TLS based protective tunnel for providing
authentication methods have been developed for it. IEEE privacy and credential security to the clients requesting
802.1x based EAP is a generic authentication framework and network service.
only defines the transport and usage of identity credentials. 3. The proposed protocol is analyzed using the SPAN–
EAP encapsulates the user credentials like usernames, pass- AVISPA simulation tool and its results showed that the
words, certificates, tokens, OTPs, etc. which a client presents proposed authentication scheme is efficient and secure.
to the network for proving its identity. No doubt existing 4. We proved that our protocol is safe and all the specified
authentication methods are contributing in network security, security goals i.e. mutual authentication and secrecy of
more or less, yet each of these methods have significant draw- susceptible attributes are achieved.
backs. 5. We have analyzed that the performance of our protocol
Password based authentication schemes are very easy to is better than other similar protocols in terms of com-
implement and manage, but are less secure. X.509 certifi- putation and communication overhead, as it completes
cate based authentication schemes are considered to be most the entire authentication process in very less number of
secure, but are hard to setup and maintain technically as well steps.
as are costly. In soft token based authentication schemes like
OTP, user needs access to a device, like a phone or computer. 1.3 Organization of the paper
Other disadvantage to using soft token based authentication
is the possibility of an attacker having access to the software This rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2
that is sending and receiving the code. On the other hand, dis- presents a literature review, in order to present a well under-
advantage of using hard token based authentication scheme standing of existing work related to our approach. Section 3,
is the need to possess some physical device. These devices gives an overview of the architecture framework of 802.1x
can be stolen by an attacker, or even lost or damaged by the and EAP. Section 4 presents the discussion of our authenti-
end user. In biometric based authentication system, which cation scheme. Section 5 details the formal analysis of our
uses the individual’s biological data to verify the identity method using SPAN–AVISPA tool. Section 6 shows the sim-
also have many limitations. The biggest disadvantage of bio- ulation results of proposed protocol and its comparison with
metric authentication is that biometric identifiers cannot be other similar protocols. Finally, Sect. 7 presents the Conclu-
changed or reset, if compromised. sions with some remarks and future scope.

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A secure n-secret based client authentication protocol for 802.11 WLANs 261

2 Related work for VANET, where the authentication process is carried out
at authentication centre. Authors in [11] have proposed an
In last one decade wireless network security has remained initial access authentication protocol, named FLAP which
an active area of research for industry and academia. A lot realizes the authentication and key distribution functions.
of advancements have been observed from every aspect for They have done the formal evaluation of the method by
ensuring the secure and fast communication services to the establishing a real test-bed and by using the NS3 simulator
users. After studying the client authentication mechanisms and compared their method with EAP–TLS. In [12] authors
used in various network security models deployed in the wire- have proposed an authentication method by considering the
less environment, the idea for developing a secure and feature character of the terminal users. In their scheme they have
rich authentication scheme for an enterprise grade network- deployed two AAA servers, local and central for increasing
ing environment is conceived. In this section work related the speed of the authentication process. Fan C. al. in [13],
with our research has been presented. have introduced a complete EAP method, which fulfills the
Authentication scheme EAP-PK introduced by Idrissi et requirements of RFC 4017, provide lightweight computation
al. [5] provides mutual authentication by using a unique pair and have forward secrecy property. Authors have used only
of keys (Ke, Kd), which is a pair of pre-shared secret keys the symmetric encryption–decryption for reducing the com-
between the client and authentication server. This method putation overhead of the protocol. They have performed the
does not require PKI infrastructure. A unique pair of keys comparison of their method with existing WLAN authentica-
is generated by the authentication server and communicated tion methods in terms of security requirements defined in the
to the client via some other secure channel independent of RFC 4017. They have also calculated and compared the com-
802.11 WLAN. At the time of authentication both the par- putation time of EAP–TLS, EAP–TTLS, EAP–PEAP and
ties i.e. client and authentication server ensures each other EAP–FAST etc. with their proposed method and reported that
that they possess the secret key pair. After the successful due to the use of only symmetric encryption, the computation
authentication the same key pair is used for the encryption cost has reduced drastically in comparison to authentication
and decryption of data flowing between the communicat- methods, which uses the asymmetric encryption in carrying
ing peers. Author in [6] has introduced a new technique out the authentication process.
for securing the WLAN network by designing a fast token- In the work undertaken in [14] has identified a weakness
based authentication scheme for the wireless network. In WPA2 protocol’s four-way handshake. The newly discovered
this scheme temporary and permanent tokens are generated vulnerability, which author calls a Key Reinstallation Attack,
and issued by the authentication sever to the wireless client, allows a hacker to tamper with or record and replay third
which are then used by the client to derive the token keys dur- message of four-way handshake, enabling them to reinstall
ing the registration and authentication process respectively. a cryptographic key that’s already been used. That key reuse
The token keys derived during the registration and authen- also resets the counters for how many packets, or bits of data,
tication stage are used to encrypt the data flowing between have been sent and received for a particular key. When these
the client and authentication server. In the work titled, fast tallies are reset, an attacker can replay and decrypt packets,
and secure authentication using double token based scheme and even forge packets in some cases. In [15] it is stated that
for WLANs by Poonam et al. [7], authors have proposed a WPA3 is the next generation of Wi-Fi security, which pro-
double token based fast authentication scheme. They have vides cutting-edge security protocols to the market. It adds
performed the security analysis and comparison of proposed new features to simplify Wi-Fi security, enable more robust
method with the original EAP–TLS. They have reported that authentication, deliver increased cryptographic strength for
the enhanced method improves the EAP–TLS handshake and highly sensitive data and maintain resiliency of mission crit-
protection mechanisms. ical networks. Over time, the resistance of authentication
In the work undertaken in [8], authors have proposed a protocols to attack is increasing [16]. To secure the older
new authentication method EAP–TTLS–ISRP. The authen- authentication protocols, it is common to use some form of
tication method proposed by them ensures both user and encrypted channel to protect the insecure method across an
device authentication. They have verified the efficiency and insecure network. The development of strong tunneling tech-
security of the proposed method by using the AVISPA tool. nologies such as the Transport Layer Security (TLS) and the
In [9] authors have done the analysis of EAP–FAST protocol IP Security protocols (IPSec) offers an attractive solution for
and have found that this method uses server certificate only protecting the authentication protocols.
once in the beginning (when client has not valid PAC) and In [17–19] authors have enhanced the efficiency of EAP–
all subsequent sessions skip the PAC (Protected Access Cre- TLS and EAP–TTLS authentication methods either by mod-
dential) provisioning. This technique makes it faster than the ifying the steps or by replacing the cipher-suite algorithms.
other certificate based EAP methods. Work in [10] proposes After performing a detailed literature review, it has been
a new authentication scheme based on hash chain method observed that password based client authentication methods

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262 P. Kumar, D. Kumar

are simple to manage and easy to deploy, but are vulnerable sophisticated and secure X.509 digital certificate are avail-
to various attacks. On the other hand certificate based client able for use with the 802.1X authentication framework. Every
authentication methods like EAP–TLS provide highest level authentication mechanism has its own set of strengths and
of security, but are difficult to deploy and manage. These weaknesses. These methods depict a tradeoff between secu-
methods also have long authentication delay as compared rity, cost and ease of deployment.
to the password based methods due to the processing over-
heads. The tunneled methods EAP–TTLS and EAP–PEAP 3.1 Features of 802.1X and EAP authentication
were developed to achieve the balance between security and framework
performance and require only authentication server to have a
digital certificate, where client can be authenticated using any Various features of 802.1X and EAP authentication frame-
legacy methods. These tunneled methods are also vulnerable work are:
to various attacks, if not properly implemented [20].

• Support for multiple authentication mechanisms

3 802.1X–EAP authentication • Network Access Server (NAS) devices i.e. switches or
access points need not to have mechanism for understand-
To enhance the security of 802.11 WLANs, IEEE 802.11i has ing each authentication method and may act as a pass-
developed an authentication framework identified by 802.1X. through device for a backend authentication server [21]
This framework uses various EAP methods for providing the • Separation of the authenticator from the backend authen-
secure means of user authentication in a flexible manner. tication server simplifies credentials management and
Basically 802.1X provides a network access model, whereas policy decision making.
EAP adds the various authentication methods for accessing
the network. It is a data link layer protocol for providing
the user authentication services in wireless networking envi- 4 New Personal Dialogue Based
ronment. It protects the network by denying access to the Authentication (PDBA) scheme
network services until a user requesting access to the network
is authenticated successfully [21]. Generally, IEEE 802.1X With the increased usage of wireless networks for enterprise
based authentication is deployed in enterprise grade WLANs as well as home applications, demand for the more sophisti-
to accomplish the authentication process. In this system, the cated authentication and encryption techniques has increased
port with which the client device is associated remains in many folds. In the present decade secret sharing for secure
unauthenticated state and allows only the authentication traf- authentication has emerged as a hot area of research in field of
fic to pass through it. Once the authentication process is network security. Strength of network access control mech-
completed successfully it changes its state to authenticated anism is one of the primary factors used in the estimation
state. In this way 802.1X port access control mechanism of level of data security managed by any online information
prevents full access to the network services until authenti- system. Therefore, protecting the confidentiality of data is of
cation process completes successfully. 802.1X framework paramount importance for every organization.
defines three entities namely Supplicant, Authenticator, and In this work we have designed a novel authentication
Authentication Server, and all these entities reside in three scheme referred here as n-secret based Personal Dialogue
separate devices. Supplicant resides in wireless client sta- Based Authentication (PDBA), for the authentication of
tion, access point contains authenticator and authentication wireless clients in an enterprise grade network. It is a
server resides in AAA (Authentication, Authorization and TLS protected authentication method, which works after the
Accounting) server such as RADIUS. All the components of establishment of secure channel between the wireless client
802.1x authentication framework are shown in Fig. 1. and authentication server by using the TLS protocol. In this
EAP is a universal authentication protocol which provides method, rather than combining multiple factors of different
the support for multiple authentication methods by encap- types, authentication is made on the basis of unique PID
sulating the client credentials into the generic frames [4]. (profile ID) and client’s response to one or more dynamic
It provides a flexible and open architecture for supporting challenges put by the authentication server.
the multiple authentication methods. It enables the dynamic In this scheme, it is mandatory for a regular user to com-
selection of authentication method at the time of authentica- plete the registration process prior to accessing the network
tion, based on information transmitted in the access-request services. A wireless profile of every regular user is created
made by the client. after the successful completion of the registration process.
Various EAP and non-EAP authentication methods, rang- While creating its profile a user provides the values for the set
ing from the most basic password based technique to most of attributes presented by the system through a user friendly

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A secure n-secret based client authentication protocol for 802.11 WLANs 263

Fig. 1 Components of 802.1X

Framework

interface. This authentication protocol provides the strong outer tunnel between client and authentication server. In the
mutual authentication, where server is authenticated to the second step, this secure tunnel is used to protect client’s
wireless client by sending its X.509 digital certificate to it, authentication credentials, which pass through this virtual
and client authentication is accomplished by combining its TLS tunnel. This tunneled PDBA authentication method used
multiple factors, which are unique Profile_Id, MAC address for the client’s authentication can also be referred as inner
and response of one or more random challenges. authentication method.
The authentication process of a registered client using the
4.1 Registration process of PDBA scheme PDBA method is depicted in Fig. 2. Here in this protocol,
the entire process of mutual authentication is carried out
In this method, for registering with the network, it is manda- in two stages. In the first stage, authenticator generates an
tory for every new user to create its profile by providing the EAP-identity request as a part of the association process. As
values of the mandatory fields and selecting a pre-specified this method support client identity hiding, so to preserve the
number of factual questions from the list provided in the client’s anonymity, supplicant on the wireless client hides the
interface. After selecting the specified number of questions, client’s true identity and forwards the passphrase anonymous
user has to provide responses corresponding to the selected or anonymous@realm_x as its identity. Clients belonging to
questions. The user also has the flexibility of adding fac- the domain of authentication server sends only passphrase
tual questions of its own choice. Once the user’s profile is ‘anonymous’, while the clients from the other domains i.e.
submitted successfully, authentication server will assign a roaming clients sends anonymous@realm_x to the authenti-
unique PID to the newly registered user. PID, which is the cation server as their identity . On receiving the association
unique profile_id of the client, is sent to the client out-of-band request, firstly network is authenticated to the client by send-
through some secure channel like email, after the registration ing the authentication server’s public key certificate to the
and subsequent approval process of client’s profile by the net- client. After the successful authentication of network to the
work administrator. client, a secure virtual tunnel is established between client
The link for completing the registration process is sent and authentication server. Now authentication server sends
to every new client by sending an invitation email at regis- an identity request packet to the client, requesting it to send
tered email id. The entire registration process of the client its true identity. In response to the authentication server’s
is secured by using the SSL-encrypted HTTPS connec- request, client forwards its unique PID and MAC address
tion. After the successful registration of the client following to the authentication server. On receiving the client’s cre-
information is maintained by the authentication server cor- dentials, authentication server verifies these. If PID is found
responding to the every registered client. correct and MAC address is there in the MAC list asso-
ciated with that client, then the authentication server will
• Unique PID (Profile_Id) assigned to client by the authen- dynamically select a factual challenge from the list of fac-
tication server. tual questions associated with that PID and send it to the
• MAC List, a data structure for holding a list of 3–4 MAC client. In response to the factual challenge, client will send
addresses of the devices, which client generally uses for the appropriate response for proving its identity. On receiv-
accessing the network. ing the client’s response, authentication server will verify
• A list of n-secrets along with their responses, provided the response, depending on the outcome of the verification
by the client at the time of registration. process authentication server may send authentication suc-
cessful or failure or may send another dynamically selected
factual challenge to client. In this authentication scheme
4.2 Authentication process of PDBA scheme
authentication server will put minimum zero challenge and
at the most three challenges before the client. As depicted
In this method, TLS protocol is used to protect the entire
in the last row of Table 1, in case the PID provided by the
client authentication process by using a combined two-step
client is incorrect, then no challenge will be presented by the
approach. In the first step, TLS protocol is used to authenti-
authentication server and authentication will get failed. All
cate the server to the client and for establishing a protective

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 264

Table 1 Possible outcomes of PDBA authentication method

123
Unique profile MAC address of Response of Response of Response of Outcome of
ID (PID) and mobile client factual factual factual authentication
security challenge-1 challenge-2 challenge-3 process
domain/realm (FC-1) (FC-2) (FC-3)

Correct Found Correct FC-2 will not be generated FC-3 will not be generated Successful and
next step begins
Correct Not found Correct Correct FC-3 will not be generated Successful, New
MAC will be
added to the
MAC list and
next step begins
Correct Not found Incorrect Correct Correct Successful, new
MAC will be
added to the
MAC list and
next step begins
Correct Not found Correct Incorrect Correct Successful, new
MAC will be
added to the
MAC list and
next step begins
Correct Not found Incorrect Incorrect FC-3 will not be generated Failure, error
message:
authentication
failed and
access denied
Correct Found Incorrect Correct FC-3 will not be generated Successful and
next step begins
Correct Found Incorrect Incorrect Correct Successful and
next step begins
Correct Found Incorrect Incorrect Incorrect Failure, error
message:
authentication
failed and
access denied

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Incorrect Does not matters FC-1 will not be generated FC-2 will not be generated FC-3 will not be generated Failure, error
message:
profile/user
does not exist
P. Kumar, D. Kumar
A secure n-secret based client authentication protocol for 802.11 WLANs 265

Fig. 2 EAP–TTLS–PDBA
authentication process

the possibilities, which may arise during the authentication under in Peer-Server notation. These steps are used by
process are listed in Table 1. us for modeling the PDBA authentication method and its
further conversion into the High Level Protocol Specifica-
tion Language (HLPSL) for its verification and validation
4.3 PDBA protocol working procedure in PS
using the SPAN–AVISPA tool. Comments beginning with
(Peer-Server) notation
% symbol are given on the right side of these steps (in
bold) for the better explanation of the authentication pro-
The dialogue between the client and authentication server
cess.
for accomplishing the mutual authentication process is given

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266 P. Kumar, D. Kumar

P ← S: request_id % peer receives request for identity • Light weight and secure mutual authentication scheme.
message • Support both user as well as device authentication
P → S: respond_id.UserId % anonymous ID sent by • Unlike single password, user authentication is based on
peer, will reveal only realm the unique profile_id and random challenges put by the
system for granting access to the network.
1st Phase: TLS tunnel establishment
• Support user privacy by identity hiding in TLS tunnel.
P ← S: start_ttls
• Purely soft-tokens based authentication scheme, hence
P → S: Version.SessionID.Np.CipherSuite % Client_
no physical device or token is required for authentication.
Hello, consisting of values for beginning a new session
• Being purely soft-token-based scheme, it is very easy and
P ← S: Version.SessionID.Ns.Cipher % Server_Hello,
inexpensive to implement.
consisting of values for beginning a new session
• No need of hefty PKI for client authentication, hence
P ← S: S.Ks_inv(Kca) % Public Key/ Server certificate
reduces the burden of network administrators.
signed by CA
• No fear of stolen, lost or forget like physical tokens or
P ← S: Shd % server_hello_done message is sent by
passwords.
server
• Legitimate user can use any device for accessing the net-
P → S: PMS_Ks % client_key_exchange encrypted with
work services.
Public Key of server
• No time bound expiry of tokens like passwords or OTP.
P → S: Ccs % change_cipher_spec message is sent by
• No need of any other secondary device like mobile phone
peer to server
for completing the authentication process.
P → S: {Finished}_SessionK % finished from peer
• Resistant to both type of attacks active as well as passive
encrypted with session key
like MITM, password sniffing, replay and brute force.
P ← S: Ccs % change_cipher_spec message sent by
server to peer
P ← S: {Finished}_SessionK % finished message from
Server encrypted with session key
5 Formal analysis of EAP–TTLS–PDBA using
SPAN–AVISP tool
2nd Phase: using TLS tunnel for authenticating
the peer established in Ist Phase The PDBA authentication protocol has been analyzed for
realization of the specified security goals by using the
P ← S: RequestID % peer once again receives request
AVISPA, Automated Validation of Security Protocols and
for identity
Applications tool. This simulation tool executes protocol
P → S: Prof_Id_Ks % peer sent unique Profile_Id
models coded in the HLPSL, which is a role based lan-
Encrypted with Public key of the server
guage. The structure of the AVISPA tool is shown in Fig. 3. In
P ← S: Rand_Chal % server puts a Random Chal-
this tool hlpsl2if module translate the HLPSL code into the
lenge/Factual question from Profile
Intermediate format (IF). The intermediate format is then
P → S: Chal_Response_Ks % peer response is sent to
processed by a model checker module to analyze the accom-
server encrypted with server’s Public key
plishment of the specified security goals. There are four back-
P ← S: Success/Failure % depending upon the veri-
end tools are available for the analysis the IF specification.
fication of challenge response authentication process ends
These tools are: OFMC (On-the-Fly Model- Checker), CL-
with success or failure message.
AtSe (Constraint- Logic-based Attack Searcher), SATMC
The complete mutual authentication process between the
(SAT-based Model-Checker), TA4SP (the Tree Automata
mobile supplicant (MS) and the authentication server (AS)
tool based on Automatic Approximations for the Analysis)
through the authenticator is depicted in Fig. 2. In this process,
of Security Protocols. Possible flaws in a protocol can be
it is assumed that the mobile supplicant is an already regis-
identified using these back end tools. OFMC uses the sym-
tered entity and possesses a valid PID (Profile ID) obtained
bolic techniques for performing the bounded analysis and
from the authentication server after completing the registra-
protocol falsification. It provides a translation which is used
tion process successfully.
to find an attack in the protocol. Translation and checking
are fully automatic and performed by OFMC without help of
any external tool [22] (Fig. 4).
4.4 Features of the n-secret based PDBA For the verification and validation of our protocol, we
authentication have chosen the OFMC (On-the Fly Model Checker) back-
end tool because of its many interesting features. It supports
The novel authentication scheme is very rich in terms of good the verification of secrecy of information between the autho-
features, which are listed under: rized entities by using the goal predicate secret supported

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A secure n-secret based client authentication protocol for 802.11 WLANs 267

Fig. 3 Architecture of AVISPA

tool with four back-end tools

Fig. 4 Output generated by PDBA authentication with OFMC backend

by it. By using the goal predicate request, we can define By goal specification in HLPSL: secrecy_of sec_pid,
and verify the goal of strong mutual authentication [23]. In sec_chalrs, sec_pms, sec_sessionK
the designed authentication protocol the following security
properties have been verified: 2. Strong Mutual Authentication between Server S and Peer
1. Secrecy property of the parameters shared between Peer P:
P and authentication server S: – Authentication of Server S by Peer P on Ks i.e. Public
Key of authentication server
– PID(Unique Profile ID of the Peer)
– Chal_Rs (Challenge Response provided by the Peer) By goal specification in HLPSL: authentication_on
– PMS (Pre Master Secret) auth_ks
– Session Key(derived between server and peer)

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268 P. Kumar, D. Kumar

Fig. 5 Protocol simulation of PDBA in SPAN

Fig. 6 Protocol simulation of EAP–TTLS–CHAP in SPAN

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A secure n-secret based client authentication protocol for 802.11 WLANs 269

Fig. 7 Protocol simulation of PEAP-MSCHAP in SPAN

– Authentication of Peer P by Server S on PID(Peer’s TTLS–CHAP and PEAP–MSCHAP is shown in Figs. 6 and 7
Profile ID) and Chal_rs(Challenge response given respectively.
by the Peer in response to the Challenge put by the
authentication server)
6 Results and discussion
By goal specification in HLPSL: authentication_on
auth_pid On executing the PDBA authentication protocol’s HLPSL
specification by using the OFMC backend tool of SPAN the
By goal specification in HLPSL: authentication_on following output is obtained:
auth_chalrs SAFE
DETAILS
BOUNDED_NUMBER_OF_SESSIONS
5.1 Performance analysis of TTLS–PDBA PROTOCOL
/home/span/span/results/EAP_PDBA.if
We have performed the performance analysis of PDBA GOAL
authentication method, by using the protocol simulation tool as_specified
of SPAN. The output of SPAN’s protocol simulation tool for BACKEND
the TTLS–PDBA method is shown in Fig. 5. As depicted OFMC
in the figure, the process of PDBA mutual authentication COMMENTS
between client and server is accomplished only in four steps. STATISTICS
For comparing the performance of our protocol with other parseTime: 0.00s
similar tunnel based authentication methods we have selected searchTime: 0.36s
two very popular mutual authentication protocols EAP– visitedNodes: 113 nodes
TTLS–CHAP and PEAP–MSCHAP, which are similar in depth: 10 plies
working and perform the task of mutual authentication in two The output of simulator given in Figs. 5, 6 and 7 shows
stages like PDBA protocol. The protocol simulation of EAP– that our protocol is safe and all the specified goals of client

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270 P. Kumar, D. Kumar

identity privacy, credential security, session key security and References

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method can be extended by incorporating the more sophisti- 15. Alliance, Wi-Fi. (2019). Discover Wi-Fi security. Resource Doc-
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Conflict of interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of authentication protocol EAP-TTLS using encrypted ECDSA.
interest. International Journal of Computer Science Issues, 10(6), 173–177.

Research involving human participants and/or animals No human par-

ticipations and/or animals has been involved in this work.

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A secure n-secret based client authentication protocol for 802.11 WLANs 271

20. Hoeper, K., & Chen, L. (2010). An inconvenient truth about Dinesh Kumar is currently work-
tunneled authentications. In IEEE conference on local computer ing as Associate Professor and
networks (LCN). https://doi.org/10.1109/LCN.2010.5735754. Head in the Department of Infor-
21. Aboba, B., Blunk, L., Vollbrecht, J., Carlson, J., & Levkowetz, H. mation Technology at DAV Insti-
(2004). RFC 3748-Extensible authentication protocol (EAP) (pp. tute of Engineering & Technol-
1–67). Network Working Group, The Internet Society ogy, Jalandhar, India. He has done
22. Genet, T. (2015). A short SPAN+AVISPA tutorial. Research Report. B.Tech in CSE, M.Tech in Infor-
https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01213074v1/document. mation Technology and Ph.D. in
23. Viganò, L. (2006). Automated security protocol analysis with the Computer Engineering. He has a
AVISPA tool. Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, vast experience in teaching as well
155, 61–86. as research. His research inter-
ests are in the fields of Natu-
ral Language Processing, Machine
Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to juris- Learning, Wireless Networks, and
dictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Data Structures. He is the author
of over 70 research papers in various international journals and con-
ferences. He has guided 35 M.Tech Thesis and 02 Phd candidates. He
is a Life member of Indian Society for Technical Education (ISTE),
Pawan Kumar received his Mas- Computer Society of India, Punjab Academy of Sciences and Member
ters degree in information tech- of Computer Society of India, International Association of Computer
nology in the year 2000 from the Science & Information Technology. He is also a reviewer of many
science and technology university reputed journals.
of Haryana (India). Presently he is
pursuing Ph.D. from the technical
university of Punjab (India). He
is working as Assistant Professor
in Computer Science in a highly
reputed college of Punjab (India).
He is having about 18 years expe-
rience of teaching various courses
at UG and PG level. Kumar has
published about 10 papers in var-
ious peer-reviewed research jour-
nals of national and international repute. He has also presented about
10 papers in various national and international conferences. His
research interests span (but not limited to) data structure, wireless
security, software engineering and expert systems.

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