Abstract: Secure communication protocols are disclosed in which two parties generate a shared secret which may be used as a secure session key for communication between the parties. The protocols are based on Diffie-Hellman type key exchange in which a Diffie-Hellman value is combined with a function of at least a password using the group operation such that the Diffie-Hellman value may be extracted by the other party using the inverse group operation and knowledge of the password. In one embodiment, each of the parties explicitly authenticates the other party, while in another embodiment, the parties utilize implicit authentication relying on the generation of an appropriate secret session key to provide the implicit authentication. Typically, the parties will be a client computer and a server computer.

Abstract: A password-only mutual network authentication protocol and key exchange protocol using a public key encryption scheme in which a server generates a public key/secret key pair and transmits the public key to a client. The client determines whether the public key was chosen in an acceptable manner, and if so, continues with the protocol. Otherwise, the client rejects authentication. If the protocol is continued, in one embodiment the client generates a parameterp as a function of the public key and a password (or, in an alternate embodiment, as a function of the public key and a function of a password). If the public key space mapping function FPK applied to p, FPK(p), is an element of the public key message space, then the protocol continues. If FPK(p) is not an element of the public key message space, then the client determines to reject authentication, but continues with the protocol so that the server does not gain any information about the password.