A Generic Authentication System based on SIM

Today the Internet is mostly used for services that require low or none security. The commercial and governmental applications have started to emerge but met problems since they require strong authentication, which is both difficult and costly to realize. The SIM card used in mobile phones is a tamper resistant device that contains strong authentication mechanisms, and if Internet services could use the strong authentications of the SIM card it would be very convenient and cost-efficient. This paper presents an analysis and a design of a generic authentication system based on SIM. The proposed system supports different types of authentication methods to target the various security requirements of the services; OTP authentication, GSM/UMTS authentication, and PIG authentication. Another feature of the proposed system is that it can easily be extended as the authentication mechanism used in a single sign-on system