The performance analysis of public key cryptography-based authentication

• Main Author: Kaiqi Xiong
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: European Alliance for Innovation (EAI) 2018-05-01
• Series: EAI Endorsed Transactions on Security and Safety
• Subjects: Security; Performance Evaluation; Complexity Analysis
• Online Access: http://eudl.eu/doi/10.4108/eai.15-5-2018.154770

Several Kerberos-based authentication techniques using public-key cryptography have been proposed. Public-key cryptography can be used to eliminate a single point failure problem in the Key Distribution Center (KDC) and achieve better scalability. Public Key Cryptography for Cross-Realm Authentication in Kerberos (PKCROSS) and Public Key Utilizing Tickets for Application Servers (PKTAPP, a.k.a. KX.509/KCA) are considered two notable techniques. The latter was suggested to improve the former, but their actual computational and communication times have been poorly understood. This paper first presents a thorough performance evaluation of the two protocols based on analytical analysis and queueing network models. As shown, PKTAPP does not scale better than PKCROSS. Then, this paper gives a new public key cryptography-based group authentication technique. We show that the new technique can achieve better scalability than PKCORSS and PKTAPP and our performance methodology is effective.