DHCP Protocol Using OTP Based Two-Factor Authentication

In today's digitized world, with the evolution of internet and technology, the number of computer networks have been increasing rapidly and so have been the threats to the networks. Due to the constant attacks on networks worldwide, network security has become of utmost concern now. While most of the network layers of the TCP/IP and OSI models have fair to middling security measures, the Layer 2 does not have adequate security. The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) on the data link layer does not authenticate the servers and clients and also has plain text transmission of data packets so it is susceptible to several attacks. This paper introduces a new scheme using OTP sent to mobile to legitimise DHCP clients and servers so as to increase the security of the data link layer. OTP DHCP an novel authentication technique, based on an extension of the DHCP protocol, S-DHCP [1]. This protocol dynamically assigns IP addresses to the clients and mutually authenticates the clients and servers, and also protects the integrity of messages exchanged between them using an OTP for authentication.