Public-key Cryptography: Theory and Practice

5.5. Entity Authentication

Entity authentication (also called identification) is a process by means of which an entity Alice, called the claimant, proves her identity to another entity Bob, called the prover or the verifier. Alice is assumed to possess some secret piece(s) of information that no intruder is expected to know. During the execution of the identification protocol, an interaction takes place between Alice and Bob. If the interaction allows Bob to conclude (deterministically or with high probability) that the claimer possesses the secret knowledge, he accepts the claimer as Alice. An intruder Carol lacking the secret information is expected (with high probability) to fail to convince Bob of her identity as Alice. This is how entity ...