A new privacy‐preserving authentication protocol for anonymous web browsing

Abstract

Anonymous authentication technique receives wide attention in recent years since it can protect users' privacy. Anonymous web browsing refers to utilization of the World Wide Web that hides a user's personally identifiable information from the websites visited. Even if a user can hide the IP address and other physical information with anonymity programs such as Tor, the web server can always monitor the user on the basis of the identity. In this paper, we firstly give an overview and cryptanalysis on the protocol of Yang et al and point out the security weaknesses of their protocol.Then, we propose a new authentication protocol for anonymous web browsing. In the proposed protocol, we take the advantages of a pseudo identity mechanism and an identity-based elliptic curve cryptography algorithm to achieve user anonymity, robust security, and high efficiency. The result of security analysis and performance evaluation indicate the feasibility and practicality of our proposed anonymous authentication protocol.

SACT: A New Model of Covert Communication Based on SDN

“…The secure anonymous communication between users and service provider are realized. Yang et al [ 15 ] proposed a new anonymous network authentication protocol, which used pseudo identity mechanism and identity based elliptic curve system to achieve anonymity, robustness, and efficiency.…”

Foreword to the special issue on security, privacy, and social networks

“…A Java‐based prototype has been developed by the authors, and the authors test its malicious script alleviation capability on several web applications. Yang et al propose a novel privacy‐preserving authentication protocol for anonymous web browsing, which help users avoid being monitored by the web server on the basis of the identity. In particular, the proposed protocol makes use of a pseudoidentity mechanism and an identity‐based elliptic‐curve cryptography algorithm.…”