Abstract

Computer security is a field of computer science concerned with the control of risks related to computer use. The importance of computer security is continuously increasing with the rapid growth of computer technology, and becomes nowadays the most essential aspect in the computing world. One of the key requirements of computer security is authentication, which is to establish the authenticity of someone or something by verifying the real identity of that entity. In this thesis, we researched authentication, its techniques and requirements. Then, we shifted our focus on passwords, their history, subjective attacks, passwords systems, password authentication protocols, their history, evolution, goals and characteristics, formal definitions and proofs, and provided a summary of all existing protocols accompanied with comparisons. We included some statistics gathered from a password survey. Then based on our results, we suggested some enhancements on existing password systems to strengthen their advantages and minimize their weaknesses. We also introduced our protocol Mutual Authentication and Key Exchange using Usernames and Passwords (MAKE-UP), to implement our key idea on practical setting and help in solving numerous problems in this crucial security field. Our idea is to keep the user ID secret, and to use it as a compulsory form of authentication with the passwords