A feasible and cost effective two-factor authentication for online transactions

Authentication is the process of verifying a user's identity when the user is requesting services from any secure IT system. By far, the most popular authentication is a basic username-password based method that is commonly considered to be a weak technique of authentication. A more secure method is the multi-factor authentication that verifies not only the username/password pair, but also requires a second or third unique physical or biological factor. However, the feasibility of multi-factor authentication is largely restricted by the deployment complexity and cost. In this paper, we propose a technique of two-factor authentication, called SofToken, that eases the deployment process and greatly reduces the cost, while maintaining the same level of security as achieved by current available techniques. A RFID application is also proposed to improve the portability of SofToken.