An improved pairing-free identity-based authenticated key agreement protocol based on ECC

Recently, Cao et al. proposed an identity-based pairing-free two-party authenticated key agreement (ID-2PAKA) protocol using elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). We have shown that Cao's protocol is vulnerable to two attacks called known session-specific temporary information attack (KSTIA) and key off-set attack (KOA). In this paper, we proposed an improved paring-free ID-2PAKA protocol based on ECC that not only eliminates the weaknesses of Cao et al.'s protocol, but also provides resilience against other known attacks, the detail security of which are provided. Our protocol requires minimal message exchanges and minimum computational overheads. Finally, the proposed protocol has been compared with other relevant protocols and expected outcome has been found. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of ICCTSD 2011.