Recap of Entity Authentication

Summary

In this chapter, we discussed mechanisms that provide entity authentication. Since strong entity authentication mechanisms require an assurance of freshness, we first reviewed freshness mechanisms. And since an important means of providing freshness mechanisms is challenge-response, which relies on random number generation, we began with a discussion of random number generation. Because of this, some of this chapter dealt with issues of wider significance than entity authentication.

However, our treatment of entity authentication was also incomplete. One of the most important cryptographic mechanisms for entity authentication is authentication and key establishment protocols, which we’ll look at after we have discussed what cryptographic protocols are.

Lastly, we note that entity authentication is often combined with other services. While there are applications in which one entity is simply required to identify itself to another, in many applications, the real reason for requiring entity authentication is to provide a platform on which other security services can be built. This is why entity authentication mechanisms are often components of more complex cryptographic protocols.