Abstract
Password-based authentication using smart card provides two factor authentications, namely a successful login requires the client to have a valid smart card and a correct password. While it provides stronger security guarantees than only password authentication, it could also fail if both authentication factors are compromised ((1) the user's smart card was stolen and (2) the user's password was exposed). In this case, there is no way to prevent the adversary from impersonating the user. Now, the new technology of biometrics is becoming a popular method for designing a more secure authentication scheme. In terms of physiological and behavior human characteristics, biometric information is used as a form of authentication factor. Biometric information, such as fingerprints, faces, voice, irises, hand geometry, and palmprints can be used to verify their identities. In this article, we review the biometric-based authentication scheme by Cheng et al. and provide a security analysis on the scheme. Our analysis shows that Cheng et al.'s scheme does not guarantee any kind of authentication, either server-to-user authentication or user-to-server authentication. The contribution of the current work is to demonstrate these by mounting two attacks, a server impersonation attack and a user impersonation attack, on Cheng et al.'s scheme. In addition, we propose the enhanced authentication scheme that eliminates the security vulnerabilities of Cheng et al.'s scheme.