An efficient and secure multi-server password authentication scheme using smart cards

With the rapid growth of computer networks and communication technologies, more and more computers are linked together such that facilities can be shared through the networks. However, most resources provided by the servers over the Internet are not free for all users. Therefore, providers of the facilities have to make resources under appropriate protection. The password authentication schemes are usually regarded as the most efficient and practical ones to protect the resources of the remote servers. Nevertheless, most of the proposed password schemes are only designed for the single-server environment, the user who wants to access from the different servers needs to register many times. In 2004, Juang proposed an authentication scheme for multiserver architecture. However, Juang's scheme lacks efficiency. In this article, we propose a more efficient and secure authentication scheme for multiserver architecture such that it can be applied in the real world.