This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination. IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL 1 Robust Biometrics-Based Authentication Scheme for Multiserver Environment Debiao He, Member, IEEE, and Ding Wang Abstract—The authentication scheme is an important crypto- graphic mechanism, through which two communication parties could authenticate each other in the open network environment. To satisfy the requirement of practical applications, many au- thentication schemes using passwords and smart cards have been proposed. However, passwords might be divulged or forgotten, and smart cards might be shared, lost, or stolen. In contrast, biometric methods, such as fingerprints or iris scans, have no such drawbacks. Therefore, biometrics-based authentication schemes gain wide attention. In this paper, we propose a biometrics-based authentication scheme for multiserver environment using elliptic curve cryptography. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed scheme is the first truly three-factor authenticated scheme for multiserver environment. We also demonstrate the completeness of the proposed scheme using the Burrows–Abadi–Needham logic. Index Terms—Authentication scheme, biometrics, elliptical curve cryptosystem, smart card. I. I NTRODUCTION A S a basic pattern recognition system, the biometric system has been widely used in our life. Such system acquires a biometric key (e.g., fingerprints, faces, irises, hand geometry, palm prints, etc.) from an individual, extracts a feature set, and stores it in the database. Upon receiving a new biometric key, the system extracts a new feature set and compares it with that stored in the database. If the two feature sets are matching, the system could recognize the individual; otherwise, the system will reject the individual [1]–[3]. Compared with cryptographic keys and passwords, biometric keys have many advantages. Several advantages are described as follows [4]: 1) it is difficult to lose or forget biometric keys; 2) it is difficult to copy or share biometric keys; 3) it is difficult to forge or distribute biometrics; 4) it is difficult to guess biometric keys; 5) it is more difficult to break biometric keys. Therefore, the biometric key is very suitable for mod- ern cryptography. It has been used in the design of encryp- tion schemes [5], [6], digital signature schemes [7], [8], and Manuscript received November 26, 2012; revised January 14, 2014; accepted January 15, 2014. This work was supported in part by the Open Funds of State Key Laboratory of Information Security under Grant 2013-3-3 and in part by the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China under Grant 20110141120003. D. He is with the School of Mathematics and Statistics, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China and also with State Key Laboratory of Information Security, Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China (e-mail: hedebiao@163.com). D. Wang is with the School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China (e-mail: wangdingg@ mail.nankai.edu.cn). Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSYST.2014.2301517 signcryption schemes [9], [10]. The authentication scheme is an important cryptographic mechanism, through which two communication parties could authenticate each other in the open network environment. Due to advantages of biometric keys, the biometrics-based authentication scheme is inherently more reliable than traditional password-based authentication. Therefore, it has been studied widely. Lee et al. [11] proposed a fingerprint-based remote-user au- thentication scheme using smart cards. Unfortunately, Lin and Lai [12] and Chang and Lin [13] pointed out that Lee et al.’s scheme cannot withstand the masquerade attack and the conspiring attack separately. To overcome these weaknesses, Kim et al. [14] proposed a new fingerprint-based authentication scheme using smart cards. However, Scott [15] found that Kim et al.’s scheme is not secure at all. Later, Khan and Zhang have pointed out that Lin and Lai’s scheme [16] is vulner- able to the server spoofing attack and proposed a security- enhanced scheme. In 2010, Li and Hwang [17] has proposed a new biometrics-based authentication using smart cards. Un- fortunately, Li and Hwang’s scheme cannot provide proper authentication [18]–[20] and is not secure against man-in-the- middle [18] and denial-of-service attacks [18], [19]. Three improved schemes [18]–[20] were also proposed to overcome the weaknesses in Li and Hwang’s scheme. With the widespread use of the distributed system, more and more multiserver environments are used to provide conve- nient and efficient network services. Therefore, the biometrics- based authentication scheme for multiserver environment is required by practical applications. However, those biometrics- based authentication schemes [11], [12], [14], [18]–[20] are designed for client–server environment and are not suitable for multiserver environment since the users have to remember many passwords. To solve the problem, Yoon and Yoo [21] proposed a biometrics-based authentication scheme for multi- server environment using elliptical curve cryptosystem (ECC) and smart cards. However, Kim et al. [22] found that Yoon and Yoo’s scheme cannot withstand the offline password-guessing attack when the smart card is lost. Kim et al. [22] also proposed an improved scheme to the weaknesses. He [23] also pointed out that Yoon and Yoo’s scheme is vulnerable to the privileged insider attack and the impersonation attack. It is easy to say that He’s attacks are valid for Kim et al.’s scheme. Further- more, neither of Yoon and Yoo’s scheme and Kim et al.’s scheme is a truly three-factor authenticated scheme since the adversary could impersonate the user once he obtains the password and the smart card. To enhance security, we propose a new biometrics-based authentication scheme for multiserver environment using ECC and smart cards. The analysis shows 1932-8184 © 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.