Performance Analysis of Public‐Key Cryptography‐Based Group Authentication

Several Kerberos‐based authentication techniques using public‐key cryptography have been proposed in the last decade. The purpose of using public‐key cryptography is to eliminate the problem of a single point failure in a key distribution center (KDC), and achieve better scalability. Among the techniques, the two notable ones are public‐key cryptography for cross‐realm authentication in Kerberos (PKCROSS) and public key utilizing tickets for application servers (PKTAPP). This chapter begins with an overview of public‐key cryptography‐based authentication. It gives an in‐depth discussion of PKCROSS and PKTAPP and then presents their performance evaluation using queuing theory. The chapter also presents a new public‐key cryptography‐based group authentication technique along with the details of message flows. Finally, the chapter gives a performance analysis of the proposed technique and compares it to PKCROSS and PKTAPP.