A Multifactor Hash Digest Challenge-Response Authentication Scheme for Session Initiation Protocol

Abstract

Authentication is a process by which the sender and the receiver identify the legal communicating partners prior to commencement of message transactions.  Authentication is a kind of security which is ascertained at the time of initiation of the communication between the two communicating entities like client and server.  Network communications are found to be vulnerable due to the increase of number of threats from unknown intruders.  Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is used for initializing the session between two communicating devices or entities.  This protocol is widely used in multimedia communications. SIP is a powerful signaling protocol which initializes, establishes, maintains, and terminates the session between the communicating devices.   Many authentication schemes were proposed for SIP from time to time. Here we propose a new authentication scheme for SIP based on Multifactor Hash Digest Challenge-Response Sequence Count method. This method enhances the SIP authentication and overcomes vulnerability attacks like Password guessing, Server spoofing, Replay, Bucket Brigade and Modification Attacks.  This method ensures the Confidentiality and Integrity in SIP Authentication process.