An Improved Mutual Authentication Mechanism for Securing Smart Phones

As technology advances, many wired and wireless devices have been created to fulfill consumer needs. With the popularity of the Internet and wireless networks, communication between devices has become necessary for accessing services. It is important for service providers that only legal clients with authorization access these services. By contrast, service consumers must verify that services are provided by legitimate servers. Therefore, many mutual authentication protocols have been developed to achieve this goal. This type of research has mainly been applied to server–client and peer-to-peer architecture, including radio frequency identification, wireless mobile networks, and wireless sensor networks. The proposed protocols have focused on securing exchanged messages in communication channels, and they assume that devices are secure. However, hackers have exposed devices, such as smart phones, to more threats and attacks. Hackers have begun targeting the Android platform because it has become a popular smart phone platform. Malware and phishing websites can steal sensitive information such as user account details and passwords. This negates protocol security. This paper improves the scheme developed by Li et al. and proposes a security mechanism to better protect protocol parameters. The proposed mechanism enhances mobile device security and allows protocols to take effect.